My Captain
by KCS
Summary: Five reasons why the crew of the Enterprise would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.  Sixshot, nonslash.  Kirk-and-Spock-centric whumpage.  What's not to love?
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: My Captain  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, McCoy & others  
**Rating**: K+  
**Word Count**: (this part) 4330  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Angst, schmoop, literary references, the usual TOS campiness that we all know and love, etc. Episodic spoilers (this part) footnoted at the end of the chapter. Kirk's booklove is taken straight from canon; specifics are mine.  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_ Originally the first part of this started as a ficlet for my _fever/delirium _spot on my **hc_bingo** card, and it morphed into this thing, which then morphed into a six-shot. Updates will be slow, but each chapter will be self-contained. Title inspired obviously by _O Captain, My Captain._

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* * *

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**VI.**

Innocuously enough, it began with _Alice in Wonderland_.

Peter Kirk had, understandably, had difficulty sleeping the first three nights following the final disintegration of the Denevan parasites, and while the captain was not permitting himself the time yet to grieve personally, he was in control of himself enough to gently guide his nephew through the process of release. McCoy could scarcely fault the man for keeping himself rigidly together, if he could aid the child in dealing with the bone-deep pain that accompanied the loss of both parents and many friends.

The _Enterprise_'s midnight had long since come and gone this particular Stardate, and her captain still roamed the halls, sleepless and haunted by ghosts of what had never been said between siblings separated by career choice and too many lightyears, and what never _could_ be said, now. His steps moved unconsciously to Sickbay; most nights of this sort were spent in the company of one of the two men who currently were sound asleep in the ward – Spock feverishly dozing on his observation bed (the parasite's death had not negated the presence of the now-decaying tissue in his nervous system, resulting in a slight fever and measured discomfort), and McCoy finally having collapsed on his own office couch.

Peter Kirk was still awake two beds over from Spock's, however, and James Kirk was not so selfish as to retreat instead of seating himself beside the child with as sadly compassionate a smile as he could muster.

"Can't sleep?" he whispered, not a question but rather an observation, and received a silent, sad shake of tousled head. "Well, I've brought you something," he added after a slightly awkward pause, and carefully handed the child an old-fashioned, leather-bound book.

The smell of leather and ink and the rustle of crisp paper caused Peter's eyes to widen, and the child sat up in the bed, reverently running a finger along the smooth binding.

"Your father gave that to me when I turned five years old," Kirk murmured softly, remembering well the first birthday he'd had after learning to read at a ridiculously early age, and how amused his family had been with his childhood fascination with old books and antique bookstores. His throat threatened to close in choked agony at the memory of that happier time, but he resolutely continued, forcing the words past the painful blockage. "I'm lucky it's still in such good shape, I guess."

Blue eyes shone brilliantly in the dimly-lit ward, silent but seeing far more than any child so young should.

"Here," the captain whispered, and pulled the chair closer with a nearly-silent creak. "Let me read you some of it? That's it – just lie back and close your eyes, kiddo…good. Now then, let me see…"

And he read for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty – thirty, and beyond; first to distract the child, and then later to distract himself, immersed in memory and not realizing that his nephew had long since fallen asleep, safely in the arms of childhood's fantasy.

He trailed off at a small, contented child-sigh that drifted over the Sickbay-issue blanket, and hastily shut the volume before the tears that threatened to spill over could possibly ruin and blotch the precious pages. Peter was long since asleep, and he probably should try again to do so himself; hopefully this time it would be without childhood nightmares resurfacing in the wake of his brother's death.

He was halfway to the door, scrubbing angrily at one stubborn tear that traced softly down his face, when he realized with the sudden shock of instinct that Spock was wide awake, and lay silently watching him from the next bed. Unspoken sympathy shone softly in the dark eyes as they followed his progress across the room.

He halted, frozen for a moment in a combination of embarrassment and utter helplessness, not knowing whether to speak or retreat or neither or both.

Finally the calm voice that could soothe him even in the most violent of situations broke the silence. "Lewis Carroll," Spock spoke quietly, gesturing toward the volume tucked lovingly under the captain's arm. "A favorite of my mother's," he further clarified, offering a rare glimpse of his half-human childhood; a precious gift that the captain had rarely seen before, and hesitant comfort without saying so in words. "She insisted upon reading to me from various Terran classics each night when I was not of sufficient age to begin my public schooling."

He could not help but smile down at the leather-bound tome, imagining a very inquisitive toddler-Vulcan attempting to wrest sense from _Jabberwocky_'s illogicality, and his embarrassment fled with the shadows around his heart, for tonight at least.

"I remember the story well," Spock added after a pause, his voice falling gently amid the muted sounds of the monitors overhead, "and it was…reassuring, to hear part of it again tonight."

Such an immense admission was a sacrifice of Vulcan ideology, and he recognized the offering for what it was – an indication that all beings had weaknesses, and that it was no shame to admit to them in front of those closest to them. It was a precisely logical, so very _Spockian_ way of comforting, and the warmth of it wrapped around him as surely as if he'd been hugged tightly in the darkness of the dimly-lit ward.

Blinking suspiciously, he glanced up at the bio-monitor. Spock's fever was hovering at a low level; uncomfortable, but not dangerous – most likely the Vulcan was more bored than in pain, and distraction would be welcome.

For both of them.

He hesitantly placed _Alice in Wonderland_ on the blanket, and then reached to move the chair over to his First's bedside.

"Where did I leave off?"

* * *

McCoy was unsurprised to see the captain slipping quietly through the doors of Sickbay that evening after the disastrous away-mission-gone-wrong, but he _was_ surprised to see an old hardbound book tucked carelessly under the golden sleeve.

His eyebrows crawled up at the sight of the title, and a faint flush rose into the captain's neck and face. "Jim, since when do you read ancient Western romances in your free time?" he asked, hiding the devilish grin that threatened to show from behind his hand – what blackmail potential _that_ was!

"I _don't_," Kirk retorted indignantly, though with less enthusiasm than a real defense warranted. McCoy's grin widened, spilling over at last. "…not very often, anyway," the captain muttered gracelessly after a moment's awkward silence.

The physician couldn't help but laugh at the embarrassed look on the captain's face, though it really was no surprise that the man had a soft spot a mile wide for books of any kind. What he didn't quite understand, was why Jim had toted a dog-eared _Riders of the Purple Sage _with him to Sickbay tonight.

The captain offered no explanation, and he knew better than to ask questions; he only pointed out which recovery cubicle Ensign Tormolen, one of their newest transfers from Starbase Thirteen, was in when asked and watching as Kirk made his way back there.

That didn't stop McCoy from switching on the audio feed from the cubicle to eavesdrop for a few minutes on the conversation; he needed to be certain the captain wasn't going to excite the patient, or that Jim would be inflicting even more guilt upon himself than he had already over circumstances no one could have controlled.

"Captain!" The surprised exclamation filtered through the monitor, the ensign's voice weak from blood loss but alert enough to be shocked at the unheard-of appearance of her commanding officer in her recovery room.

"Ensign." A brief, slightly bitter chuckle. "Please don't even try to sit up; we both know Dr. McCoy would have a fit and he'd kick me out before I had a chance to do anything else to you."

The young woman laughed softly, though the physician could sense the nervousness and uncertainty in her voice when she spoke. "Am I to be debriefed now then, Captain?"

"Definitely not, Ensign," was the reply, a diamond-hard edge in the tone. "You are to remain here until you are fully recovered, and no one is going to bother you about reports and briefings until then. Captain's orders."

"…Aye, sir." The woman was obviously confused, McCoy could tell, but he was getting no abnormal readings from her biobed and so he permitted the conversation to take its course; it was not disturbing yet. "Is anything wrong, sir?"

"Ensign…" a short sigh, and then, "I'm really here to thank you, you know."

A startled pause. "Just doing my job, sir."

Anger tinged the captain's voice, though it was only audible to McCoy from long association with Jim Kirk's protectiveness toward his crew. "I _am_ aware that the primary concern of landing party Security teams is the safety of the captain, Ensign."

"Sir?"

"Just the same…" Kirk swallowed, and continued, "…I'm very glad you didn't die in performance of your duty on your very first landing party aboard this ship, Tormolen. You did save my life down there in that mess, and…thank you."

The stress indicator of the injured woman's monitor slid down instantly, and the doctor relaxed at last, knowing the talk had been good for both his patient and his captain.

The short screech of a chair being moved filtered through the comm-unit.

"Captain?"

"Do you mind if I stay for a little while, Ensign?"

"Certainly not, sir," the woman replied quietly.

"Good." The pain was fading from Kirk's voice now, as he took on that particular blend of humor and dramatic flair that characterized his command style in a way unique to him and his ship. "Your roommate, Lieutenant O'Dell, informs me that you are fond of Zane Grey novels?"

An embarrassed cough. "Um…yes, sir."

Kirk's voice showed his smile more clearly than a visual would have. "Would it surprise you, Ensign, to know that I have a few of them myself?"

A long, startled pause. "…Aye, sir." The Ensign was obviously smiling as well now. "You do?"

"I do," Kirk declared smugly. A rustling of paper, and the creaking of chair. "I thought you might like to read this one, Ensign. I have Bridge duty in twenty minutes, but until then…"

McCoy reached out and shut off the audio feed, knowing he had listened long enough to a private conversation, and smiled to himself as he returned to his paperwork.

* * *

And it had escalated from there. No one really knew how it became private knowledge or why said knowledge fascinated the crew so much, but two years into the five-year mission the entire crew knew that when a crewman was sick or injured, at some point the captain would show up in Sickbay with an old book, either paper or digital, and would read aloud to them for the odd half-hour.

Security members no longer dreaded the long days spent in Sickbay under McCoy's eagle eye and irascible temper, for during those days they became the favored few who received more than one visit from their captain, always with something new to read or discuss together. The nursing staff looked forward to the captain's scheduled or impromptu visits, which they fondly dubbed _Kirk's Reading Hour_, and gathered shyly around the doors of whatever room he was in to listen.

No one knew how Kirk had located a leather-bound, gilt-edged copy of _Anna Karenina_ soon after the outbreak of Rigellian fever aboard (1), but the whole Sickbay watched with affection as the captain donned a protective EV suit to enter Chekov's quarantined room to read to him for an hour each evening.

Nurse Chapel could have wept with sheer relief when, three days into the excruciatingly painful process of the Fabrini cure for xenopolycythemia (2), the captain patiently read _Gone with the Wind_ aloud (despite cranky and quite vocal protests about being 'a doctor, not a child') in its near-entirety one long night. That was the first time in four days McCoy actually slept more than three hours at a stretch, and the nursing staff watched with blurry vision as the captain finally crashed shortly after his friend, too exhausted to get up from his chair.

One of Spock's Experimental Science lieutenants, a tiny little fireball of brains and brilliance, nearly died of delight when, incapacitated from a virus due to a broken petrie dish in Science Lab Eleven, she received a rare paper copy of two treatises regarding relativistic physics as it pertains to warp travel, written by distinguished Vulcan physicists just after First Contact.

Scotty, under observation for coolant gas inhalation one day after a mild skirmish with a renegade Klingon, drew the line after a well-meaning but atrocious captainal attempt at mimicking Robert Burns's accent in a Scottish poetry anthology, but the rueful laughter the two men shared did more good for both of them than the words themselves would have.

McCoy grinned for days at Sulu's dumbfounded expression when the captain presented him with three antique Japanese comic books from Earth's late twenty-first century and _Burton's Guide to Plants in the Alpha Quadrant _(3), after the young man was laid up with a broken ankle and mild hypothermia after an away mission on an ice planet.

Just after the incident with NOMAD (4), the entire Sickbay covered their ears and tried not to laugh as loudly as Uhura was, when Kirk read her the entirety of Gilbert and Sullivan's _Pirates of Penzance_, complete with accents, different voices, and his best god-awful caterwauling (McCoy's words; while James Kirk was a magnificent orator, he could not carry a tune to save his life) the lyrics to each song. The whole ward was giggling, or trying to hide the fact, by the time the captain left in a small huff, but the doctor had never seen such rapid improvement in a mentally-damaged patient's spirits as he did then.

* * *

Then came the disaster that was Argos III.

A simple, uncomplicated survey mission of an uncharted planet; perfect atmosphere and temperature, entire lack of harmful animal life and entire lack of sentient life whatsoever, idyllic meadows, mountains, and seas reminiscent of old Earth's best topographical beauty-spots. It was a paradise, and not a deceptive one as they had encountered before; for a peaceful week landing parties took samples, explored, and vacationed to their hearts' content – and enjoyed every moment of it.

Then McCoy's staff discovered a strain of plant life on the far south side of the planet that contained properties comparable to those used in the makings of the galaxy's most dangerous illegal drugs; hallucinogens, addictive elements, neurotoxins.

The plants bore enormous blossoms of black or deep purple and yellow, looking similar to earth's sunflowers but not as large, growing four or five to a stalk in meadows as wide as a shuttle bay. Had one of Spock's overly-suspicious protégés not given the place a precursory scan before they began exploring they never would have known the danger the plants could cause – similar to the effects large fields of poppies would have upon humanoid physiology, only magnified a hundred times in these more deadly blooms.

Even at a safe distance from the blossoms, Lieutenant Drambel from Xenobotany collapsed, her existing sensitivity to hallucinogens amplified by the effects, and they instantly began a landing party recall, warning existing parties of the dangerous plants and planning precautionary measures.

No one remembered until fifteen minutes later, when McCoy and Spock both beamed down, together and without any sort of bickering or protest, that the captain had wandered off by himself earlier that morning – at Spock's encouragement, the landing party recalled, for Kirk had been under incredible stress lately and the area looked similar to Earth's Iowa.

Kirk had put up a token resistance and then, smiling at an indolent insect that fluttered by on colorful wings, had strolled off after it with the intent of relaxing for a few hours.

And he was the only one, at this point in time, that had not responded to the emergency medical recall.

Spock ordered search parties to look in the pseudo-sunflower fields first, remembering from a past visit to Earth's Midwest that there were many such fields and thinking, correctly as it turned out, that they would attract the captain's attention.

They found him, almost an hour later, ten meters into one of the meadows.

By the time McCoy got him to Sickbay, the captain's brainwave signatures were off the charts in erratic fluctuations; he was delirious at worst, unresponsive at best, blood pressure and respiration swinging wildly from too low to far too high, body temperature skyrocketing from the effects of his battle to fight off the airborne toxins attacking his nervous systems.

For twelve hours the battle for survival raged across Sickbay; James Kirk was fighting for his life, and so was the entirety of the _Enterprise_ medical staff – but progress was minimal, the treatment only partially effective, for they had never encountered such a powerful airborne neurotoxin combination before.

Spock had pulled every available Science and Medical officer from non-essential duty and distributed them throughout the fourteen science labs aboard (5), in an effort to discover some treatment that might aid the captain in his struggle to survive the havoc being wreaked upon his nervous and respiratory systems, but to no avail. For the first time, they all needed a miracle – but the man who usually seemed to work them was dying in Sickbay, and attempts by any other ended in failure.

Twelve hours after being discovered semi-conscious on the planet below, the captain's overtaxed systems shut down and he relapsed into a coma, from which McCoy could not give anyone odds as to when or if he would ever awaken.

* * *

Starfleet was not unsympathetic to their situation when informed a week later and, given that their current mission and the next two were simple charting and mapping missions, the Admiralty gave them a further month to observe Captain Kirk's condition before making shifts in the chain of command (Spock's flat refusal to accept a field promotion earned him a series of stern looks but also a bit of sympathy from those who knew Kirk personally).

After two more weeks had crawled by on broken wings, the captain's condition had not improved even the slightest; McCoy could detect no brain activity other than autonomic responses, and there had been no indication that the toxins to which he was exposed had not done permanent damage.

By that time, Spock was haunting the halls and thoroughly freaking out any crew member who happened upon him during the small hours of ship's night. Scott had buried himself in the guts of his Lady and refused to come out, only eating when kind-hearted Uhura brought him a tray from Officers' Mess and practically force-fed its contents to him. The alpha shift crew barely spoke during business hours, trying their best to function at peak capacity so that they would not receive the frustrated attention of their Acting Captain, and the entirety of the crew complement went about their jobs with an almost funereal air; it was as if the ship herself mourned the loss of her most vibrant member.

After another week of no change and working around the clock to produce exactly complete failure, McCoy finally drank himself into a crying stupor and crashed, all alone, in the captain's quarters. Spock found him there the next morning, after a methodical computer-aided search for their missing CMO.

There were no words of recrimination or censure for his lapse in professional control, no admonitions that his time should be spent in his office, attempting the impossible and curing their captain – they had moved beyond the need for such pointless venting shortly after the Tholian incident (6).

Instead, "Come, Doctor," Spock spoke gently, and helped the human to his feet, steadying him when sick and shaky legs barely supported his wavering balance.

"I hate myself," the physician groaned after they had entered the lift, resting his head against the cool wall.

"You have no cause to do so," was the quiet response, though it was not devoid of the same self-recrimination. Guilt was illogical, and yet to deny its existence was equally illogical; how did one deal with such a no-win situation?

"Spock, what're we going to do? We only have nine more days before they stick another braid on your sleeve and send us to the nearest Starbase to hand Jim over to a medical facility!"

Vulcans do not flinch, and yet this one did despite the fact that they were entering Sickbay and several nurses could see. "We _have_ those nine days, Doctor. You must hold to that, for there is little left for us to do but hope."

They paused for a moment at the door of the Captain's private room, a habit now after four weeks of the same routine every morning.

McCoy blinked. "What's she doing?" he asked blearily, trying to clear his hazy vision enough to see.

Spock's eyebrows furrowed together in a slanted black line. "Nurse Chapel appears to be reading to the Captain." A thoughtful timbre suddenly tinged his voice.

Chapel had heard them, and looked up quickly, a slight blush darkening her cheeks. "Doctor, are you all right?" she asked, rising from the chair and making her way to the door.

"I'll need a detox shot and some black coffee, my own fault," McCoy grunted, but his eyes were on the book in the nurse's hand. "You really readin' him _James and the Giant Peach_?" he asked, blue eyes regaining a slight twinkle for the first time in several days.

"It's one of his childhood favorites," she explained simply, and walked over to a cabinet to retrieve the doctor's detox injection. "Along with _Peter Pan_ and _Treasure Island_."

McCoy's eyes bugged. "And you know that, how…?"

"I contacted his mother," was the dry reply just before the hypospray met his neck.

The physician shook his head to rid himself of neck kinks, and then opened his eyes, thoughtful. "You know we haven't tried much of those more archaic methods of coma therapy," he murmured slowly. "I mean we've all been talking to him, reading different logic and cognitive puzzles and so on aloud to him, trying to get his mind to jumpstart itself…"

"And we have not simply _been_ there, as we would in normal life, speaking as to a friend instead of a coma victim," Spock interjected quietly, surprising everyone within earshot with the entirely emotion-based observation.

Blue eyes met brown, determination suddenly sparking in their depths. "Well we're gonna fix that. Nurse, get me a officers' duty rotation schematic, and make me a copy of that book list."

Chapel smiled. "Right away, Doctor."

* * *

The first day, little happened. McCoy, Chapel, and Spock took turns at regular intervals reading aloud (Chapel was hard-pressed to not giggle and ruin the effect as the Vulcan attempted – and magnificently failed – to put 'feeling' into reading a child's fantasy story about a boy who never grew up) to the captain, but with no noticeable results.

The next day, McCoy's rotation list took effect, and he was not pressed for volunteers to come and sit with the captain, either reading or just talking of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and anything else that popped into their heads. Again, there was no visible change in the captain's status, but they persevered throughout that third day and into the fourth.

And that fourth night, they were finally rewarded.

Scotty and an eager Engineering crew had gotten together to read the captain's childhood favorite, _Treasure Island_, in dramatized format – each doing a different voice, and Scott himself as the narrator. It was horribly corny, in McCoy's opinion, but absolutely hilarious, and the Sickbay rang that night with a dozen enthusiastic voices refraining about a dead man's chest and bottles of rum.

Near the end of the story, as he watched from the doorway, his heart suddenly stopped for a second.

Scott, who had been facing him, halted the proceedings immediately, worry creasing his features. "Doctor, what is it?"

He felt for the nearest empty chair and dropped into it before his legs could deposit him on the floor, and pointed breathlessly at the monitors over Kirk's bed.

"He heard that, Scotty," he breathed, gesturing at the pulse indicator – now a fraction higher than it had been for three and a half weeks. "Jim _heard_ you."

The room went dead silent as the engineering crew stared at him, and then broke one by one into a chorus of wide grins and watery smiles.

The CMO grinned back, hope flaring in his heart for the first time. "His heart rate's spiked before once or twice – usually when Spock touches him, go figure that – but it's never gone up and stayed like that before. He can _hear_ you, fellas, I'm sure of it now. Keep it up."

* * *

McCoy never did figure out how the most boring voice aboard (honestly, Vulcan inflection was an oxymoron in itself), reading the most boring literature aboard (the Vulcan Science Academy's latest periodical on spatial anomalies), could be the catalyst that finally brought the captain back.

_But then again,_ he thought in relief-infused amusement as Jim's weak "I liked _Peter Pan_ better, Spock" reverberated around the ward and the Vulcan's lips twitched suspiciously in answer,_ I shouldn't have been surprised…_

* * *

**Footnotes:**  
(1) _Requiem for Methusaleh_  
(2) _For_ _the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky_  
(3) Sulu's love for botany is seen in _The Man Trap_ but never explored after that.  
(4) _The Changeling_  
(5) According to Kirk in _Operation Annihilate_, that is how many Science Labs the TOS _Enterprise_ had  
(6) _The_ _Tholian Web_

All else is my own creative license.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: My Captain (2/6)  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, crew OCs, minor canon crew  
**Rating**: T for safety  
**Word Count**: (this part) 8191  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Speculation as to canon incidents (footnoted). General TOS canon spoilers. Rating is for violence and blood, nothing more.  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_  
**A/N:** In case anyone was wondering: the five reasons which make up my title are hidden within these chapters. Each incident within the chapter falls into that reason and they are all connected by said reason, though several incidents will have multiple meanings within that general reason. I'd be interested in knowing what readers think are the reasons I'm using here. Also, there's a hidden subplot here, a growing working relationship between Kirk and Spock that I'm attempting to explore without really using them as focal points; so if you see details like that, I'm trying to get that across without coming out and making the story solely about them.

Also, no matter what I do, keeps erasing my dividing lines. I'm sorry for the confusion. *glares at site*

* * *

**V**.

For two months after the Pike-Kirk captaincy switchover, the galaxy watched the Federation's poster boy with no more than mild interest. He was the Shooting Star of the Academy, the youngest captain ever in the 'Fleet, and appeared to most uninformed individuals as primarily a pretty face with a decent set of brains and a starshipload of melodramatic charisma.

But within the year, all those they encountered in their voyage soon found out one dangerous truth – you _don't_ want to touch Jim Kirk's crew.

One year into the _Enterprise_'s voyage, they had just rotated out twenty-five crewmen at Starbase Thirty-Two and were on their first shore leave with the new crew complement. The captain himself had beamed down with a few of the senior officers in one of the shore leave parties, and had taken up residence with a reluctant-looking Commander Spock in the quietest corner of the seaside bar in which half his planetside crew were entertaining themselves.

"It's _logical_, Spock," he had slyly overcome the Vulcan's dubious protests. "The crew will behave better if there are COs present, and besides – we didn't even get to get off the ship at the Starbase. I'd like a non-reconstituted cocktail, wouldn't you?"

The I-am-Vulcan-and-therefore-am-certainly-_not_-annoyed-with-you-illogical-humans look Kirk received did not dissuade him, and much to the eavesdropping crew's amusement, he had ten minutes later beamed down with a very uncomfortable-looking Chief Science Officer.

Four hours later, as he hauled himself out of his seat with a moan, in an attempt to stop a brawl between his fiery new Russian navigator and two half-Ferengi, half-who-knew-what-but-they-were-big-and-hideous smugglers, he was regretting that decision. Spock only gave him The Eyebrow, the one that his mom gave his father years ago when he blew a hole in the barn with a homemade phaser (the one that said "That little monster is _your_ child, dear,") before his unadmitted friend returned to drinking his herbal tea and analyzing the latest treatise from the _Interpid's_ exploratory astrophysics team.

Kirk threaded his way to the escalating confrontation, which had already grown to the point where Chekov was two seconds from being lifted bodily by the neck of his brand-new tunic. "Stand _down_, Mr. Chekov," he finally snapped with all the authoritative force his formidable voice could carry.

The Russian jumped first out of surprise, and then again into attention. "Aye, sir," the young man gulped, obviously ill-at-ease around his new captain.

But Kirk didn't have the time to placate nervous newbies, or to do more than glare at the two goons who had been trying to coax the ensign's pretty little companion away with crude innuendo and cruder gestures. "Chekov, I suggest you take your friend somewhere more private. Gentlemen," he began, hands outstretched in a universal gesture of peace, trying for the diplomatic approach first, "if you will excuse my navigator?"

The young Russian had taken the pert blonde's manicured hand and was wisely edging away, but the ensign need not have worried; the two aliens' attention had swung to this newcomer in equal parts fascination, amusement, and antagonism.

Kirk looked up, hands loosely fisted at his sides and serene self-confidence in his eyes, as the foremost of the two towered over him by a good eighteen inches.

Bulbous blue-green eyes looked down. "Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship _Enterprise_." The raucous laugh that reverberated from a wrinkled throat sent the bottles on the bar shivering along the edge of the wooden counter. "So this is the little Starfleet captain the galaxy is squawking about?"

The room suddenly went deathly silent.

Spock merely clicked the next page in his periodical.

Aqua Eyes (why did these aliens never introduce themselves before jumping on his crew, so that he could at least refer to them intelligently?) roared with laughter again, casting a look at his hulking companion before turning his attention back to the small human standing before him. "And you are asking us to leave your sweet little navigator alone?" he asked, condescension dripping from the grinning words like a steady, grating-to-the-nerves faucet leak.

"No…" Kirk replied affably, that dangerous smile still firmly affixed to his face. "I'm _telling_ you, mister. Don't. Touch. My. People."

For a moment, the onlookers (mainly _Enterprise_ crew, who alternated from being indignant to amused over the whole thing) watched with interest. Most expected the two aliens to poke further fun at the captain and then move on to more exciting entertainment. Some half-expected the captain to recall the crew (and thereby ruin the fun) rather than cause a scene, while the rest were more interested in just _what_ exactly Chekov was doing with that little blonde back behind the far billiard table.

Few of them were expecting the alien to, without a word or gesture of warning, _deck_ their captain.

And none of them were expecting to see said captain come back up and promptly explode into a small golden tornado of ferocious, well-calculated, and downright _dirty_ street-fighting.

The scuffle was over before the bartender could even move for his sonic rifle or the crewmen of the _Enterprise_ could yell a protest (or an encouragement, depending).

One alien lay moaning on the ground, grasping at severely bruised ribs, (in addition to other, more sensitive, portions of his anatomy) and sporting a fast-swelling eye. The smaller alien had wisely attempted to run for it halfway through the fight; Spock had looked up from his PADD, reached out to nerve-pinch the brute, and returned to reading, after ascertaining that the captain was quite capable of finishing the battle on his own – and highly enjoying himself, by the look of it.

The Captain straightened up, mopped his forehead and then the blood pooling at the corner of his lips with the remnants of his torn sleeve, and folded his arms at the group of stunned crewmen who were gaping at him.

"We are _Starfleet_," he barked sternly. "We do not run from a battle, but to that same extent we do not _instigate_ one. Self-defense is the _only_ excuse I will ever accept from a crewman who gets himself into a physical altercation on shore leave or at any other time under my command. Am I clear, gentlemen?"

After an instant chorus of affirmatives, Starfleet's youngest captain snapped off a crisp "As you were," spun smartly in a military about-face, and returned to his seat; thus entirely missing the adoring looks from the new crewmen he'd acquired and the expressions of respect that had begun to build in the countenances of those more experienced.

When Spock delivered him a two-hundred-signature Ship's Petition the next morning, which requested that he hold weekly self-defense classes and teach said classes in person, no one was surprised except Kirk himself.

* * *

_"Captain,"_ and no, that was not peevishness in the tone crackling through the communicator; Vulcans did not get peeved, _"are you quite certain Mr. Scott is functioning at full capability?"_

Kirk smothered a laugh as Scotty's face turned an interesting shade complimentary to his uniform, his accent deepening to an affronted burr. "Mr. Spock, it's hardly m'fault that the blasted thing chose this minute to malfunction, now is it?"

_"Considering that it was fully functional not ten minutes ago and that no indications of trouble in any other system aboard have arisen in those minutes, Mr. Scott, I am forced to speculate."_

"Spock, leave him alone," the captain finally interjected, controlling his mirth. "You're just going to have to enjoy yourself down there for a few hours until we get it fixed."

_"We, Captain?"_ The suspicion was evident; he was caught and he knew it – but there was nothing the Vulcan could do at the moment and so he only grinned.

"I think I might know what the problem is, Mr. Spock, and so yes, I will be helping Mr. Scott in the transporter repair. Oh, and Spock?" he added, in response to the muttered Vulcan words filtering through the communicator, "don't bother asking if it's been fixed, not for at least three hours."

_"Understood,"_ was the dry reply.

Kirk grinned, even though he knew he was going to hear about this for the next month. "Good, good, Mr. Spock. Have fun."

He snapped the channel closed on an indignant noise of protest against the accursed word, and grinned at his conspirator.

"You're in so much trouble, Captain," the Scotsman chuckled, leaning easily upon the console.

"I know, I know." The captain smiled, eyes alight with mischief. "But his fifteen Science departments are going to thank me for weeks. You know how he's been."

"Aye, all o' that Vulcans-don't-need-sleep malarkey doesn't really apply when it's been goin' on for five weeks," Scott agreed. "He's been wound tighter 'n a drum lately. I'm only surprised that the planet Command asked us t' survey is so similar to Vulcan's temperature and gravity."

"Mm…about that planet," Kirk hedged cautiously.

"Captain?"

"We might have…been just slightly off and mistaken one of its moons for the planet itself?"

The Engineer examined the younger man's face for traces of deception, and found far too many of them.

He'd never have put his money on the idea that Kirk could literally _force_ his First Officer into a mini-shore leave on the only planet within seventy-five light-years that looked like home.

Bless his little considerate heart.

"Well, sir, it's a mistake that anyone could make."

"I'm _so_ glad we understand each other, Mr. Scott."

Scott's eyes twinkled. "We do, Captain. I'll get on that transporter repair, sir."

"Excellent."

"As soon as ye give me the override codes t' unlock the console?"

The captain cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck in a gesture of absolute innocence. "Ah. Well, you see, Scotty…"

"Shall we go get a bite o' lunch first, Captain?"

"Mr. Scott, I do like the way you think."

-ooo-

"Increase power to forward starboard shields," the captain barked sharply, as the ship rocked with the impact of another asteroid striking the hull.

"Increasing power, sir," Scott responded from the Engineering console.

"Compensate for gravimetric pull near that larger asteroid," Sulu muttered distractedly under his breath, and Chekov nodded, briefly shaking his hair in an effort to remove the perspiration from his face. "Good. Give me half-impulse aft thrusts on my mark when we reach the magnetic center. Ten degrees starboard."

Another massive asteroid struck the ship, but she barely moved this time. The captain sat tensely in his central chair, knowing better than to give orders to men who knew their jobs better than he did. "Steady as she goes, gentlemen," he remarked quietly, and that was all the encouragement the situation needed.

The _Enterprise_ had been motionless in space for two days while repairs and upgrades were being made to the warp engines, and during that time they had drifted just barely too close to an asteroid belt, several of which larger bodies held a severe level of gravity that wreaked havoc with their sensors. Not expecting this influx of force, the ship had been ill-prepared to drift into such close proximity and found herself firing up the engines too late to steer clear of the belt.

As a result, they had been forced to navigate _through_ the belt; and while this was not an extremely difficult feat under normal circumstances, especially for seasoned pilots and navigators, in this case several high-gravity asteroids and several more with immense magnetic properties near the center of the belt served to make the already difficult task absolutely nerve-wracking.

They'd been plodding slowly through the belt at impulse power, unable to warp out of the asteroid graveyard for fear of plummeting straight through a small planetoid, and for the last three hours the Bridge had been extremely tense, all personnel concentrating but Sulu and Chekov most of all.

"Steady," Sulu murmured, almost to himself. His fingers danced quickly over the controls, mirroring his co-navigator's movements. "One more burst should put us clear…make sure you stay well away from that third moon; its gravity is ten times that of the asteroids."

"Right…" the young Russian breathed, carefully checking and re-checking his coordinates.

"And…now!"

The ship jolted from the impact of a wandering asteroid, but then they were out – staring out the viewscreen at free stars, a Class-L planet and its orbiting moons fast disappearing to their left and below as they hurtled free through the vacuum of clear space.

"Course for rendezvous with the _Declaration_ resumed, Captain," Spock's calm voice intoned as their speed increased. "All stations report functions normal. Minimal structural damage from the asteroid belt."

Twin sighs of relief exploded softly from the front console, and the captain's relieved huff of a laugh echoed them. "Well done, gentlemen," he said, nodding his thanks. "That's something they don't have you do in sims at the Academy."

Chekov grumped something in Russian, but Kirk amusedly did not ask him to repeat it; he heard Sulu's "You're so not kidding" loud and clear.

"Mr. Sulu, Mr. Chekov," he added, rising and moving down into the center of the Bridge, "take three hours off. Go get some dinner, coffee, a nap, a stimulant from McCoy, whatever you feel you need. Report back at 0530 hours; we'll want you at the controls when we hit the outskirts of the Alderann nebula."

"Keptan? Our shift has not concluded yet –"

"Ensign, you've been on duty for nearly ten hours due to subbing for Matthews and Renault this morning; there's no need for an experiment in how long you can function without a break for rest or food, and nothing is going to happen to us in this area of space," Kirk answered, smiling fondly at the young Russian. "I need you both at peak performance in three hours. Now get out of here. Mr. Spock, please call for a replacement helmsman and navigator."

Sulu's protest was swallowed up by a yawn, and the two men grinned somewhat sheepishly at their superiors' raised eyebrows.

"Out," Kirk ordered succinctly, jerking a playful thumb toward the turbolift doors.

"Aye, sir."

Once inside, Chekov glanced at his thoughtful companion. "Sulu?"

"Mm, just thinking about the Captain," the other replied absently. "He could have just given us an hour break, not three hours."

The navigator nodded emphatically. "He used to be a navigator himself, you know. (1) He probably knows what it is like to be under such pressure."

"And I doubt somehow that Captain Garrovick gave him a three-hour naptime in the middle of the evening," Sulu returned with a grin as they left the lift for the Officers' Mess.

Chekov snorted. "Is logical. He does not want us piloting the _Enterprise_ into the Alderann nebula later."

Sulu thought of the quiet approval that had radiated from the command chair through the stressful last hours, the silent encouragement and lack of testy, nervous hovering that he had half-expected from the young captain, Kirk's recognition of their exhaustion; and he shook his head in fond amusement.

"Sure, Pavel. It's _quite_ logical."

-ooo-

"Are you entirely certain, Captain?"

There was no tone of recrimination in the question, no unspoken reminders of the ugly events surrounding the worst transporter malfunction of his life, no undermining of his authority. Just the simple question, wanting to reaffirm that his decision was not rashly made.

He appreciated that Vulcan sympathetic honesty, and now nodded. "I am, Spock. She can't stay; it's too dangerous. For both of us," he clarified bitterly.

The Vulcan was silent, for he knew not what to say that might make the decision easier.

James Kirk was a healthy young man, particularly attractive by human standards, and subject to human impulses and emotions as any man was.

Janice Rand was an extremely forward, open-minded, and magnetic individual, who was also subject to those same impulses and emotions.

James Kirk (when in his right mind and body and not split in two, both halves slowly dying alongside his conscience (2)) cared too much about his command, his ship, and his people to ever act on those impulses.

His yeoman had proven, more than once, that she had no such convictions that the no-fraternization rules should be entirely upheld.

It could not be permitted to continue, and the captain had come to that decision on his own. Spock was more than slightly impressed by the logic involved in the choice to transfer the yeoman with a high-honors recommendation (3); it took more self-control than many men would have possessed to make the choice, and far more nerve to carry it out in the fact of the woman's quite understandably hurt (and angry) reaction.

Under other circumstances, in another profession, the situation might have been harmless. Here, aboard the _Enterprise_, with those two extremely vibrant personalities, it was deadly. And Kirk had realized this without outside help.

The captain was far more perceptive, and far more wise, than his youthful appearance would seem to indicate. He was making the right decision, protecting both of them by an enforced distance, despite the pain it caused at the time. Spock respected that.

And, many years later, so would Janice Rand.

* * *

Rubinius II was a planet inhabited by a humanoid species whose society was in an advanced technological state; warp drive capable, but with a history of limited space travel simply due to financial difficulties. The planet's government was a ridiculously complicated hierarchy, resulting in more planetary finances being diverted to its bureaucracy than to its people, who either congregated in large metropolises or else owned vast, hundred-acre farms surrounding them. The planet was rich in mineral deposits, and while there was no dilithium to be found, the other natural fuels and ores the small satellite hid beneath its agriculturally-rich exterior made it prime fodder for a Federation-Klingon conflict.

Therefore, James Kirk had been threatened with all the power the Admiralty could wield, of dire consequences to befall were he to botch this Second Contact mission and fail to win the alliance of the Rubini with the Federation.

The Rubini were an affable, tolerant people at First Contact; very few cultural taboos, and a wide variety of philosophical and societal views that excluded no individual based upon any sort of preference or prejudice. There were few laws save those pertaining to extreme violence or immorality in existence on Rubinius, for apparently there was no need for them, and those regulations that did exist were so obscure and their punishments so harsh, that there had been only scarce instances of law-breaking in the planet's history. In short, Kirk informed the landing party with a smug grin, it was virtually impossible to offend them by saying or doing the wrong thing – a rare gift, in diplomacy.

The Captain and his party, consisting of Spock, Lieutenant Sulu, two Security guards, and the newest ensign on rotation in the Xenosociety department, had spent the past five hours in pleasant conversation with the Rubini greeting party, touring the capitol grounds and generally stalling until the captain deemed the time right for beginning treaty negotiations. The planet's primary continent's capital, Roshkau, was as pristine and alienly beautiful as any they had ever seen; even Spock admitted to being intrigued by the intricacy of the Rubini architecture, and the parks and gardens scattered around the governmental plaza were filled with fragrant flowers and several varieties of insects and small rodentoid species.

Chancellor Rhana, the head of State, explained as they toured a lush, pond-scattered scape just outside the Third Branch of State building that all life on Rubinius was equally precious, and that even the flowers were carefully protected and cultivated against any predators save those necessary to balance the ecological system. Children were taught at a young age to, quite literally, 'keep off the grass,' save in those designated play areas scattered about, and to leave non-biodegradable litter in the public parks was one of the few offences serious enough on the planet to deserve confinement time.

Security guard Garrovick ducked a pseudo-horsefly the size of his fist, wide-eyed and simply praying the thing was not attracted to the color red. Kirk's eyes twinkled in humor at the suppressed swatting instinct before he turned his attention back to the Chancellor's far-too-detailed history of the building they were currently looking at over the park's fence.

A thump sounded from a nearby tree, and they looked wide-eyed as what looked like a purple flying-squirrel (with only the wings on its two front legs; it had no back legs, more like a bat than a squirrel) landed there and regarded them with beady black eyes, chiripping in cheerful greeting.

The place was idyllic, if a little strange with its creatures that looked like giant mutant versions of their Terran counterparts.

Kirk was absently trying to listen to Sulu's geek-out over a plant that apparently changed colors depending upon the mood of the person looking at it, when a sudden shout came from behind him. He was pushed a pace to his left, and at the same time caught a flash of red and the smell of ozone as his second Security man – Thompson, his name was – brought up his phaser in a rapid move and fired a short stun beam where his captain's head had been.

The largest wasp he'd ever seen, at least eighteen inches from tip to wickedly-barbed tail, fell to the grass and began twitching from the mild charge, buzzing angrily. The _Rhau-besk_, the things were called, he remembered from his briefing, and their sting was fatally poisonous within ten minutes.

And yet, that was the least of his difficulties. The monster wasp finally whirred angrily and then lay still, dead and harmless on the lawn of the park pathway.

And the entire group fell silent, horrified.

Kirk instantly stepped forward, hands outstretched slightly behind him on either side as if to physically shield his crew, but more to keep them from acting than protect them. "I'll take care of this," he snapped in a quiet, but no less forceful, order. "Back up, all of you. Not you, Thompson; stand with me. Spock, beam the rest of the landing party back to the ship. _Now_."

"Captain, I –"

"That was an order, Commander." The responding tone was brittle with ice, and even Spock dared not cross it.

"Aye, sir. Mr. Scott, four to beam up."

The whine of the transporter sounded behind them, but the Chancellor appeared not to notice, so focused was he upon the unfortunate Security ensign. Thompson stood, stunned at the rapid change in plans and emotions, and wondered what he did – other than saving his captain from death by the powerful venom the wasp carried in its stinger?

"Chancellor," Kirk began gently, and the ensign recognized the Kirk diplomatic voice immediately. "This was an honest mistake, and I can explain –"

"Kirk, there _is_ no possible explanation or excuse for such a transgression!"

"Sir, I assure you, my man was only trying to protect me –"

Rhana's eyes flashed fire. "Enough, Captain! We will not negotiate with those who blatantly desecrate the sacred _Rhau-besk_! Your subordinate has broken one of our most sacred laws, Captain Kirk. You were made aware of this before your arrival here – and you were aware of the punishment that follows such a desecration."

The captain's face paled slightly, but his voice remained calm, soothing, in an effort to mend the situation. "I was aware, Chancellor," he admitted quietly.

"Captain, what the –"

"Shut up, Thompson."

The order was harsh, not at all like the usual calm energy that exuded from the captain, and Thompson stared, still uncomprehending. "Sir?"

"I said shut_ up_," Kirk hissed from the corner of his mouth. "Unless you want to _die_ here on this planet, Ensign?"

"For stopping a giant wasp from killing the captain?" the young man retorted, stung by the reaction to his simply doing his job.

"Ensign, the next time you are given a brief regarding a mission, I suggest you read the cultural taboo section," Kirk snapped, hazel eyes darkening to a dangerous green. "You've just killed their sacred animal – the physical manifestation of their god of death."

The Chancellor had been listening suspiciously to this muttered conversation, and took Thompson's horrified eyes as a signal that something had gone wrong somewhere. "The punishment for such an offense is, as you were well aware before arrival, Captain, death," he stated firmly. "Were you ignorant of this prior to your arrival, the punishment would have been mitigated. As it stands –"

"As it stands," Kirk interrupted, but with such finesse that the Rubini never realized it, "the offense is mine. I did not inform my men of the offense or its punishment, and therefore the blame for the offense must rest with me and me alone."

It was an outright lie – the captain would never dream of not informing a landing party of cultural no-no's; Thompson had just skimmed the report, being distracted at the time.

Wait, the punishment was _death_?

"Captain –"

"What do you not understand about the order to keep your mouth shut, Ensign?" the captain snapped, straining for control.

"But sir, they'll –"

"Chancellor," Kirk turned, glared determinedly up at the party before him. "As the fault was mine, in being remiss with my landing party, would you agree to administer the punishment to me alone, and continue to negotiate with those blameless members of my landing party?"

The taller man looked down, studying the captain curiously and not without respect. "Despite the grievous offense, we admire the desire to make amends for the wrong," he finally replied, "as well as the character of a leader who will willingly shoulder the blame for his own fault rather than foisting it off upon a likely scapegoat. I will resume our negotiations with you, Captain, if you are able to do so after the punishment."

Kirk's head shot up, partly in relief but mostly in bewilderment. Thompson was too terrified and sick to his stomach to do more than hope he had heard correctly. "The punishment for the sacrilege is death, Chancellor; I know that well," the captain answered solemnly. "I do not understand."

"Captain," and the taller man moved down to look pointedly between the two Starfleet officers, "I am well aware of your character, and am also aware of the fact that no man who can rise to a leadership position in your Federation would be so remiss as to leave his negotiating party uninformed of so serious a crime and its consequences."

The unfortunate ensign felt the blood drain from his face straight down into his shoes.

"That you would willingly shoulder the blame for the offense to protect an underling who does not deserve that consideration, is a worthy quality, and one that my people do not possess," the Chancellor declared regretfully. "We can learn much from your Federation and its people."

Hope brightened the captain's eyes.

"But the law must be upheld, Captain," the Chancellor continued with a darkening frown. "You speak of this Federation and tell us our governing system will remain our own, and yet you would refuse the punishment we administer for our greatest offense?"

The hope died, and even Spock would have been proud of the mask that fell smoothly across the captain's face. "I would not, Chancellor," he replied with unmistakable earnestness.

"Good," was the approving reply. "However, Captain, we are not unreasonable. Were you aware of our laws of innocent substitution when you took the blame for this man's crime?"

From the slight contraction of the sandy eyebrows, Thompson could see Kirk had no idea what the Rubini was talking about. "…No, sir, I was not," the captain replied truthfully.

"You speak the truth, which is well for you; for the clause would not be applicable to you as an outworlder had you been aware of its existence prior to your selfless act." Rhana's eyes softened slightly, and his aides had relaxed into a slightly horrified state, rather than the near-battle stance they had assumed after the initial wasp-killing. "The clause is rarely used, but in this case we will certainly apply it to this unfortunate situation. Namely, the law is this: if an innocent man desires to take a crime's punishment in the stead of a guilty man, then the sentence is mitigated to the next degree."

The captain mulled over this for a brief moment, slight relief bringing a bit of color back to his cheeks. "Am I permitted then, to know what the next step down is from the death penalty?" he inquired, without the traces of cocky humor he normally would have indulged in after learning a situation was not as bad as he had initially feared.

"You may call the practice barbaric, Captain, but it has proven a most effective incentive in our culture," the Chancellor replied, his voice tinged with slight regret. "The next lightest sentence after the death penalty is a flogging."

A brief look of horror crossed the young captain's face, but he squared his shoulders resolutely. "Then, Chancellor – I am prepared."

Rhana nodded solemnly. "We respect your offer of substitution, and we will negotiate with you, Captain Kirk, if you are able to do so after the sentence has been carried out. Your subordinate will accompany you."

"Captain," Thompson tried, forcing the words out past a throat numb with nausea.

Kirk glanced at him with eyes of cold steel. "That will be all, Ensign."

-ooo-

The next hour was the worst one Thompson could ever remember; he'd been through some horrible space battles, and one other disastrous away mission – and a traumatic childhood experience involving his older brother in a terrible hovercar accident – but none of them filled him with the raw, stomach-twisting horror of seeing his innocent captain taking a barbaric punishment that should by rights have fallen on him.

All his life and through the Academy he'd dreamed of being picked to serve on the _Enterprise_, for everyone knew only the best of the best were placed on the flagship; and now he was certain that he was to be jettisoned at the next Starbase – provided he was not court-martialed first for endangering a diplomatic mission and his captain's life.

Even his darkest thoughts could not fully distract him from the wicked singing of the whip as it was brought down on his stubbornly-silent captain's bare shoulders and back; each whistling brush through the air another reminder of his own incompetence. If only he had not been distracted with that transmission from his brother when the brief showed up on his monitor! He had only skimmed the information, more interested in the lives of his young niece and nephew, and now Kirk might even die due to his negligence.

Because the captain was _willing_ to die to save him.

He thought he might be sick everywhere.

The whip cracked again, and he was almost relieved to see the captain finally go limp, dangling helplessly against the restraints that held him upright by his wrists against the post – but with the next strike, he choked back a wave of bile, for it was obvious that Kirk had not fainted, merely given up the will to remain on his feet against the pain.

And the captain still had not made a sound.

That hurt almost as much as the guilt did – the knowledge that _he_ would have been a whimpering mess long before now in that situation, and that he would be _dead_ now were it not for Kirk's volunteering to take the blame for something entirely not his fault.

Finally the strokes had been counted to their end, and silence fell across the courtyard. The guards who had seized him as he instinctively moved forward when the first strike fell released his arms slowly, and the Chancellor shot him an icy look of contempt that froze the blood rushing through his veins.

That look changed to one of surprise and respect, when the captain's ragged breathing halted for a moment. James Kirk slowly hauled himself back to his feet, obviously leaning against the post for support but standing nonetheless.

"The sentence is finished," Rhana spoke, the sound echoing around the carved granite of the courtyard. "Cut him down." The Chancellor turned to Thompson, his voice calm. "Tell your captain I will speak with him in fifteen minutes' time, in the Receiving Hall."

Thompson nodded, swallowing down the heated anger that flared up at the man's calmness about such a barbaric punishment, but wisely held his tongue completely; he was not about to make things worse than they already were by opening his big mouth.

A shadow darkened the bright sunlight at the edge of the awning under which he had been held as a spectator during the flogging, and he leaped forward to take the limp form of his captain from the guards supporting the half-conscious man on either side.

"Sir, I –"

"At ease, Ensign," came the murmured reply, forced through a jaw tightly clenched against the pain. Kirk's eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his breath coming in slow, shallow rasps in an effort to not move tortured muscles any more than they must be.

As one of the guards tossed the removed gold command shirt onto the bench, Thompson half-tugged, half-guided the captain back under the shade of the awning. He moved as if to lay the shorter man down on his front, but Kirk held up a hand, falling to one knee and bracing a hand against the bench.

"Sir, you have fifteen minutes, the Chancellor said; you should lie down –"

Kirk's thin laugh sounded more like a sob of pain than actual amusement, but he did smile slightly. "Yes, I should," he breathed, closing his eyes for a moment. "But if I do, I know I won't get back up…give me exactly six minutes to catch my breath and then get me back on my feet, Thompson."

"Sir, if I –"

"And…pipe _down_ for those six minutes, will you?" the captain murmured, as his head dropped to rest on his hand, shoulders shaking with the strain of attempting to control the pain.

Thompson shut his mouth promptly, which he would have done anyway for it was with that final motion that the captain slumped enough that he could see the extent of the damage of the man's back for the first time. The whip had been of thick leather, and the wielder of it not brutal but certainly expert; laying the lashes with methodical evenness from shoulder to waist, the last layer cutting deeply into the first and second, creating welts and drawing a critical amount of blood that, if not attended, to could possibly cause the captain to bleed out within four hours, he judged.

If the negotiations took longer than two, Thompson decided he was comm-ing McCoy, orders or no orders. He didn't have anything to lose anyway; he was certainly losing his posting and possibly his commission over this already.

The six minute-mark finally passed, and he hesitantly dropped down beside the captain's heaving form.

"Sir, what can I do?" he helplessly settled for asking, and wished his voice hadn't decided to crack just as he spoke the first word.

Kirk's head lifted, eyes dull and clouded with pain as they looked at him. "Next time I send you a briefing…read it…in its entirety, Mr. Thompson," he answered, a bitter edge sharpening the words into a knife straight through the heart.

Wordlessly, for he knew he probably would burst into tears if he looked any longer at that pain-filled expression, he could only nod.

"Get me up, Ensign," Kirk gasped, after valiantly trying to stand on his own power and failing the first two attempts. "We've got a treaty to nego…" Thompson winced at the strangled noise that substituted for the end of the word, when the captain moved his arms for the first time.

"Sir, should I call Mr. Spock and the Doctor?" the ensign asked hopefully.

Kirk glared at him under a sheen of perspiration. "You may recall the landing party down here once we're in the Hall, Ensign, and not before. And not a word of this is to be breathed to any of them, is that clear?"

"Sir, you can hardly –"

"The Rubini are evidently admirers of strength, physically and that of character, Thompson. I will not show weakness in front of them unless absolutely forced to," Kirk snapped, though his face went a deathly shade of gray as he attempted a cautious neck roll.

Thompson was silent.

"Besides, have you ever seen a Vulcan version of a total nervous freak-out before?" the captain asked, quirking an impertinent grin at his subordinate.

"A…" The younger man gulped, wondering if the captain had perhaps lost some of his sanity along with the blood oozing from his back. "No, sir. I have not."

"Trust me, you don't want to," the captain returned with a wan smile. "Now, Ensign…I would appreciate the loan of your black undershirt, if you would be so kind."

Thompson's heart crept slowly up into his throat in an effort to choke him, for he knew exactly why the captain would want the extra layer – to soak up the blood between skin and gold tunic while he attempted to salvage this mess to end all messes.

Kirk made one attempt at pulling the cloth over his head, nearly passed out on the spot, and then none-too-eagerly accepted the aid from his subordinate. As he carefully yanked the hem of the shirt down and then helped the captain on with his tunic, Thompson attempted to ignore the small noises of pain that seemed to escape the captain's compressed lips despite his efforts – incredible ones, too – at controlling the agony of tortured muscle and flesh. The man's skin was not clammy as it had been five minutes ago, however; either adrenaline had driven off the shock or else Kirk simply had a virtually non-existent pain threshold (possibly both).

When the captain stepped confidently into the Receiving Hall four minutes later, and launched into the most brilliant diplomatic discussion of his mission thus far (even Spock was suitably impressed), Thompson knew at that moment he would die himself – _kill_ himself, if need be – before ever letting something like this happen to his captain again.

-ooo-

He had intended to see the captain to Sickbay (he had still not been given a regression of orders about hiding the injuries from the rest of the crew), but Kirk gave himself away when they materialized. Beginning to step off the Transporter Pad, the captain swayed drunkenly.

"Captain?" Spock's eyebrows crawled together, puzzled, and he took Kirk's arm to steady him.

Unfortunately, when the captain staggered again the Vulcan's reaction was the typical one; he kept hold of the gold sleeve with one hand and cautiously brought the other to support the center of balance in the lower middle of the captain's back.

Thompson started forward with a worried warning but was too late. Kirk went white to the lips and promptly passed out with a faint moan, legs buckling bonelessly under him as he slumped into the Commander's arms.

"Captain!"

Spock took one look at the limp golden head lolling against his sleeve, as well as the blood that was now beginning to soak its way through the third layer of fabric, and turned the most frightening glare any of them had ever seen upon the quivering ensign.

And after that day, Thompson could safely say that he _had_ seen the Vulcan version of a freak-out, thanks very much.

-ooo-

Dr. McCoy was frightening to most of the crew when he was in a pleasant mood; now, as he flew about the ward in Sickbay, barking orders to anyone in sight (and swearing something awful at those who were a bit too slow in jumping when he said jump), he was truly frightening. Even Spock, after having gently deposited his captain on his stomach upon the bio-bed, retreated before the inexorable force of those icy blue eyes, which were showering shards of cold fury upon the entire landing party for not having a med team ready in the Transporter Room when they had beamed back aboard.

Thirty minutes later, after the captain had been stabilized with an IV of fluids and was recovering from two blood transfusions, Thompson released a breath he had no idea he had been holding and turned resolutely to his CO. Spock had been waiting silently outside the large glass window separating the Captain's Room (yes, McCoy had finally started calling it that when Kirk came aboard so often in need of it) from the rest of the ward, eyes fixed upon the scene inside and their soft brown flaring into a black smolder every time Kirk unconsciously flinched under the CMO's gentle hands.

"Commander Spock," the ensign began. He wished his voice were not so hoarse, as the Vulcan no doubt was disgusted enough with him already, without added emotional displays.

"Ensign."

"Sir, I…it's probably time for me to be placed on report."

Spock's eyes left Kirk's pale face for a moment, flickering downward in the closest approximation to a quizzical look as a Vulcan ever got. "On report, Mr. Thompson?"

"Aye, sir." He gulped, but continued resolutely; it was only the right thing to do even if it meant accepting that his whole dream-future had collapsed around him and buried him in the rubble today. "I can walk myself to the brig if you would prefer to remain here, sir."

Spock spared him a mildly exasperated eyebrow. "Ensign. If the captain wished you placed on report, he would have informed me of that fact when we met on the planet's surface for negotiations," he replied dryly.

"He was hardly in a condition to do so, sir –"

"Nevertheless, if he intended to administer official repercussions for this incident his attitude toward you would have been vastly different, Mr. Thompson; in fact, I recall specifically his asking to speak with you privately upon the completion of our mission." That eyebrow hovered threateningly. "Captain Kirk's protection of his crew is his primary concern at all times. You will _not_ demean his sacrifice today nor complicate his recovery by presuming to dictate his commands, Ensign."

The intense tone should have sent him crying for cover, but instead he only trembled in relief. For if Mr. Spock did not believe Kirk intended severe repercussions for his actions, then that was the truth; the Vulcan knew the captain better than anyone aboard. He might still be transferred to a Starbase, but at least Kirk would not be booting him in disgrace before then. He could be happy with that; it was far more than he deserved.

He had never before been in such close quarters with the half-frightening, half-intriguing First Officer before, and as such his nervousness had only compounded with the passing of minutes. He had been petrified that he would bear the blame for Kirk's condition – as well he should – but no retribution had been given from the Vulcan and he was grateful for small favors.

He had never seen a Vulcan actually close his eyes in relief before, but he watched in surprise as this one did, when McCoy finally marched out the door of the captain's room and growled an affirmative to the question put to him about Kirk's condition.

"Then I shall be on the Bridge, reporting to Starfleet regarding the Rubinius II alliance, Doctor, as I shall not get a word in edgewise with you at the moment," Spock finally interrupted the tirade regarding Kirk's propensity for trouble.

McCoy cocked his head to the side, looking at the Vulcan. "What, you're not going in to see him?"

"I am certain you will agree that the captain need not have an abundance of visitors in order to facilitate his healing process, Doctor; and the ensign, I believe, needs to see him more than I."

The young man gaped after Spock as the perceptive Vulcan left, wondering if he had heard correctly – that he needed to talk to Kirk, to see if Kirk was okay, rather than the captain wishing to speak with him. He's never thought Vulcans would make decent psychologists.

McCoy apparently _had_, for the doctor shot him a calculating look and then pointed him toward the door of the recovery room.

Kirk was lying on his side, for he hated sleeping on his stomach, propped up between pillows on both sides and with an IV drip fastened to the back of his free hand. His pale eyelids shivered slightly, as he no doubt was fighting the onset of secondary sedation with every cell in his body.

"Captain?" Thompson finally asked softly, not willing to wake the man if he were asleep already.

The captain's eyelids fluttered unsteadily for a moment, and then opened completely, eyes alert enough if slightly cloudy from medication. "Mr. Thompson," he rasped in reply, wincing at the gravelly sound of his voice. "Sit down, if you please."

He grabbed the chair and moved it into position so that Kirk would not have to move more than his eyes to see him, and sat.

"Stop that," the captain chided gently, seeing how he was fairly shredding the cuff of his uniform shirt in his nervousness.

"Yes, sir."

Kirk looked at him for a moment, and then gave him a weak smile. "Relax, Ensign. There's no serious harm done here; you look like you think I'm going to jettison you out the nearest airlock for a simple mistake."

"Simple mistake!" he exclaimed. The monitor over Kirk's head beeped loudly in protest, and he hastily lowered his voice. "Sir, that 'simple mistake' nearly cost you your life, and definitely would have had they not had those substitutiary laws!"

"Yes," Kirk agreed simply. Seeing the ensign's face crumple, he continued gently. "But had you not stunned that wasp in the first place, Thompson, I most likely would have been dead anyway."

He hadn't thought of that.

Kirk nodded. "You made a mistake, Ensign – a big one," he stated. Thompson winced, but knew he definitely did not deserve for words to be minced in the matter. "However," the captain continued, his voice softening, "it's a mistake anyone could have made. And I'd rather you make a mistake in trying too hard to do your job, than making a mistake out of sheer carelessness for the lives around you."

"Sir, I…" He could not meet the gentle amber eyes, and studied his still-dusty boots instead. "I…am so sorry," he whispered helplessly.

He felt rather than saw the older man smile. "I know you are, Ensign. If I thought you were not, then I would be transferring you immediately."

Head jerking up, he stared at the captain in incredulity, and a budding hope. "Sir?"

Kirk chuckled weakly. "You're not going anywhere, Thompson. A crewman who makes a mistake and _learns_ from it is the type of crewman I want aboard this ship, because it means he will be twice as careful the next time around. Granted, if this sort of thing happens again, then –"

"It won't, sir," he breathed, relief rushing through him like a flood of warm water, thawing the icy fear that had gripped him all morning. "I swear it, Captain."

"Good." Though the smile had fallen from Kirk's face out of sheer sleepiness from medication, his eyes were still warm and forgiving. Thompson could have cried out of sheer happiness. How did you thank your superior for saving your neck at the expense of his own? Any other captain in the 'Fleet might – probably _would_ – have left him to fend for himself, not willing to disturb the wheels of native justice and risk the treaty-signing.

_"All right, you two – Thompson, get your backside out of there or I'll drag you out, so help me!"_ McCoy's voice screeched through the inter-comm beside the bed.

He jumped, and the captain laughed before muttering around a small yawn. "Go on, Ensign."

"Aye, sir. Captain, I…" He trailed off as the man's eyes fluttered closed, then dragged themselves open again, dazed.

"Sorry," came the sleepy apology. "Bones has me pumped full of who-knows-what…"

"I'll let you sleep, sir," he promised, and turned to go.

"Ensign," Kirk called after him, shifting slightly to look at the young man.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Someone once told me that mistakes…are only mistakes if you refuse to learn from them. When you do learn, then they're called _experience_."

He took a deep breath and summoned up a watery smile, and a much sharper, more respectful salute.

The captain smiled back, and waved a limp hand. "Dismissed."

* * *

(1) See the episode _Obsession_  
(2) _The Enemy Within_  
(3) We never see Rand again after the first few TOS episodes (not that I missed her in any way, believe me); she disappeared until _ST:TMP_. I really don't think Kirk would have been foolish enough to keep her around long after the events of _Enemy Within_, _Naked Time_, and _Miri_; he might have enjoyed the attention and even been attracted to her, but he wasn't an idiot.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: My Captain (3/6)  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, crew OCs, minor canon crew  
**Rating**: T for safety  
**Word Count**: (this part) 3390  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Speculation as to canon incidents (footnoted). General TOS canon spoilers. Rating is for violence and blood, nothing more.  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_  
A/N: For those expecting another h/c piece, that will come in the next (much longer) chapter. I try in these five-and-ones to make the chapters each a different tone, so as to not swamp the reader in massive angst with each one.

* * *

**IV.**

"You're such a drama queen, Jim."

The captain's head finally popped through the neck-hole of the costume, face flushed with affronted indignation. "I am not a drama queen!"

"You _are_," McCoy drawled, knocking back the last of his drink. "You're just a child who loves to play dress-up." He cast an eye over the ensemble the Gra'aitians called a traditional ceremonial dress, and shuddered.

_Dress_ being the operative word, for the flowing tunic-esque garment was of a filmy, pale lavender color and trimmed in far too much silver sparkles to be easy on the eye.

Or the masculinity, for that matter.

Gagging slightly, the doctor sent up a fervent prayer of thanks that at least the mid-thigh-length, flimsy article came with (extremely stretchy) pants underneath.

"I am not," Kirk muttered gracelessly, already scratching at the itchy trim around the neck of the robe. "What did you want me to do, refuse to wear the thing and alienate the entire planet's ambassadorial party? Ruin the treaty for the Federation?"

"At least you wouldn't be makin' me search for a medically safe equivalent of brain bleach –"

"That would just look great on the reports to the Admiralty, wouldn't it?" the captain continued, completely ignoring the jibe and the not-well-hidden snickering. "Treaty negotiations halted because James T. Kirk is not secure enough in his manhood to wear traditional ceremonial garb."

"It's a dress. A mini-dress, to be exact."

"It is not a dress, Doctor," a calmer voice intoned, and smoothed the rising emotions in the room with its owner's entry. "It is the _kai'ithra_, a symbol of acquiescence to new cultures and a gesture of deep respect toward the Gra'aitian ambassador and his party. To refuse would be –"

"It's a _dress_, no matter what logical label you stick on it," McCoy interrupted with a snicker of unholy glee at the sight of the Enterprise's First Officer. "Pink suits you, Spock. Though I think the gold sequins are a bit much."

"It is hardly our fault that the entire planet of Gra'aitia seems to wear no other colors than these feminine hues and insists upon embellishing the garments with the accompanying psychedelic accoutrements," was the mournful observation, and had the situation not been so hilarious the doctor would have been sympathetic to the Vulcan's plight.

As it stood, he only sniggered and informed Spock that he looked like a pointy-eared Easter egg.

James T. Kirk, having accepted his new garb with his usual resilient majesty, was still worrying at the silver trim around his neckline. "Stow it, Bones, or I'll have you along during the treaty signing," he threatened, though the ferocity of the stance was somewhat ineffective due to his clenched fists being placed on lavender-garbed hips.

McCoy smirked. "You don't have time to get me a gown for this ball, _Princess_."

He just barely made it out the door before a nearby PADD collided with his head, and collapsed in his own quarters, howling with laughter.

Afterwards, even McCoy admitted Kirk handled the final, very tricky, ceremonial details with serene aplomb, regardless of the suspect garment he was wearing. The Gra'aitians after signing the treaty were completely enamored with the two commanding officers of the starship _Enterprise_, for Kirk was, despite his impulsiveness, a brilliant diplomat.

Starfleet Command gratefully agreed.

They were, however, exceptionally quick to quash the sole holo-photo that had somehow been snapped of the treaty-signing…

* * *

"Who says I can't learn?" he asked indignantly around a mouthful of soup.

"_Xenobiology_ says you cannot," was the pointed rejoinder, delivered in the longsuffering tone of a tolerant Vulcan-amongst-men.

Silence.

"Jim, it is highly illogical for a grown man to pout."

"I am not pouting, Mr. Spock."

"Refusing to eat your dinner and folding your arms whilst glaring at me constitutes that particular childish display."

The glare froze the atmosphere between them even more.

"Captain, the action requires a certain amount of psionic – telepathic, in other words – energy, which you as a psi-null human are incapable of generating," the Vulcan explained patiently. (1)

"You mean you're not just pinching people, you're zapping their nervous systems too?" The captain's eyes blinked at him, incredulous.

Spock believed he now understood the allure of the human action commonly known as a head-desk. "To administer the nerve pinch with ease, then yes; I am, as you put it, 'zapping' the victim's nervous system with a slight synapse overload."

"Like a phaser stun, only in a concentrated area."

"Not an inaccurate simile," the Vulcan agreed.

"You said 'with ease'," Kirk suddenly added, eyes narrowed. "Is it possible, then, to administer it without the telepathic stun?"

He was beginning to regret this conversation in its entirety; but sighing was a human motion, and therefore he settled for exhaling softly through his nose. "Rarely has the action been mastered by a non-Vulcan, but…it is in theory possible…"

-ooo-

"Oh HECK NO."

"If you could be reasonable for a few scattered moments in time, Doctor –"

"You are _not_ usin' me for a guinea pig!"

"But Bones –"

"No." Chilled blue icicles-of-death stabbed across the room. "And Jim, if you send anybody in here due to your crazy experimenting with somethin' best left to the hobgoblins, I swear I'll jump you both with a hypo of Rigellian black virus, you hear me?"

"I believe, Doctor, that they can hear you in the Delta quadrant," Spock replied coolly, and left behind his captain before McCoy could get a comeback past his spluttering.

-ooo-

"Um…with all due respect, sir…no." The young pilot couldn't decide whether to laugh or run away screaming at the idea of someone volunteering to be Kirk's victim in Nerve Pinching 101.

"I could make it an order, Mr. Sulu." The captain was desperate by this point; he'd been turned down by over two dozen people all over the ship, and word had spread about his upcoming lessons to the point where there was already a crowd in the gymnasium to watch next hour. There would be no show, though, unless he could find someone willing to help him out.

"Captain, with respect – I signed up to pilot a starship, not this!"

Kirk scowled.

-ooo-

Finally they found one brave (or more likely just simply infatuated with her superiors) Security ensign who volunteered to be Kirk's guinea pig for the lesson, and for the next three hours the crew of the Enterprise was offered free entertainment as the captain endeavored to master the most important tenet of passive Vulcan self-defense.

He met with miserable failure in each successive attempt. Finally Spock took pity on the poor Ensign and dismissed her to McCoy's waiting muscle relaxants, and suggested Kirk try to find the proper location for nerve cluster and fingertips on his own neck first so that the captain could feel precisely everything involved with the procedure. The Vulcan spent ten minutes guiding the captain through the process, instructing regarding location and even going so far as to place his own fingers over the captain's to indicate how much pressure should be used.

Finally, Kirk gave it another game try – on himself, this time.

And promptly pinched himself into oblivion, dropping like a rock on the mat at Spock's feet.

No, Vulcans definitely do not whimper in despair, but the idea was rather tempting just at that moment.

The wide-eyed crew watching were polite enough to not laugh until one nervous lieutenant giggled from the back corner. The captain groggily awoke twenty seconds later to a resounding thunder of laughter mingled with applause, and winced visibly at the realization of what he had done.

He was just contemplating how fast he could make it to the door when he saw Spock's expression soften toward him; warm eyes betraying for his view only the fond amusement buried deep within. The tension left him, and the embarrassment melted soon after; he finally offered his First a lopsided, sheepish grin.

Then the Vulcan shook his head, and with carefully-planned melodrama planted his face behind one long-fingered hand – and the crew absolutely lost it, roaring with laughter. (2)

* * *

The only thing the denizens of the U.S.S Enterprise hated worse than a prolonged ambassadorial ferrying mission was a medical or disaster emergency rescue; while the former were stressful and painful, the latter were invariably tragic and heart-wrenching, and no crewman ever liked to hear of embarking on such.

Natural disasters occurred more frequently than the glamorous recruitment posters for space colonization depicted. Rarely in any solar system was there a planet as suitable for human life as the beautiful globe which was Terra; invariably, even on the most suitable planets, dangers lurked which no man could anticipate, and ecological or geological disasters could arise with little warning.

Such was the case with Delta Eminar, the third planet orbiting a red star in the Hydra Adelphi system. While definitely Class M on the scale of suitable planets for humanoid habitation, the planet suddenly developed in its third year of colonization extreme seismic tremors due to shifting in the tectonic plates below its oceans, which covered almost 85% of the planet's surface.

When an earthquake of truly epic proportions dropped half the sole Eminaran continent into the nearest ocean and caused a tsunami which wiped out nearly one third of the remaining colonies on the land, every starship within seven days' distance at maximum warp was diverted to the system to aid in rescue operations.

The _Enterprise_ was the third to arrive, joining the _Correspondence_ and the _Ptolemy_ immediately in evacuating those in dire need of medical attention and in setting up temporary shelters for the thousands of colonists who were now homeless.

McCoy's staff had been working around the clock for four days by the time the tremors finally ceased completely, and only then was he able to spare some of his people to begin attending to those on the surface who were in need of some simple loving care. The entire _Enterprise_ crew joined that of the other starships and moved from refugee camp to camp, setting up shelters and distributing supplies as fast as they could be replicated, entertaining the poor colonists as best they knew how, and generally working as hard as they had ever worked in their lives to make such a miserable experience less tragic for all.

The _Enterprise_ senior officers were no exception. Spock and Scotty had joined forces with the _Ptolemy_'s technicians and engineers to reboot as many replicators as could be salvaged and repaired from the damaged homes. They had also managed to bring the continent capital's main power generators back online, so that those whose homes had not been destroyed by the tsunamic terror could return there and leave room in the shelters for those who were not so fortunate.

Captain Kirk had thrown himself into the work along with his men, refusing to follow the other starships' example and merely direct traffic. Driving tent stakes into the ground here, carrying boxes of bandages there, telling a story or two around a campfire of miserable young couples one night and standing guard so one of his men could get three hours' sleep the next, he moved about his crew and the colonists with a smile and unflagging energy for all alike.

Spock finally, after receiving a convincing near-death-threat from McCoy (much to the amusement of the _Correspondence_'s Chief Engineer, who was listening bug-eyed to the conversation), dragged himself away from his work to corner Kirk the seventh evening for the purpose of convincing him to sleep one night through in the last week.

Granted, said _convincing_ included forty minutes of argument, a gentle but effective nerve pinch, and a thoroughly incensed Captain James Tiberius Kirk the next morning, but the price was worth it when on the eighth day Kirk was not folding on his feet like the rest of the crew were.

Two days later, a fleet of ships arrived to relieve the vessels already in orbit around Delta Eminar, and the united crews of the three previous rescue ships breathed a collective sigh of relief and began to slightly relax their unceasing efforts.

McCoy beamed down after a bit with a bevy of nurses and a hefty supply of anti-inflammatories for those unfortunates who had been rescued from watery prisons over the last two weeks. After seeing that his staff were functioning as efficiently as he had trained them to, he sauntered over to where Spock was calmly ladling out soup to a straggling line of children, half of whom were staring at his ears with all the wide-eyed curiosity of childhood. Obviously the little ones had never seen a Vulcan before, and even a Vulcan wholeheartedly endorsed the emotion of curiosity; McCoy could almost see the smugness radiating from the First Officer as the enraptured children thanked him for their evening meal.

"Evenin', Spock," he remarked as he approached.

One eyebrow acknowledged his presence. "Doctor. Young one," this last spoken sternly to a freckle-spattered youth with chaotic blond hair, "the spoons are meant as a tool to aid your consumption of the soup, not as a catapault with which to annoy your companions."

The doctor grinned at the fatherly admonishment, and looked down into the Vulcan's soup-pot.

A potato-chunk hit him on the side of the head.

"Nor with which to attack the Enterprise's Chief Medical Officer, _kanlar_," (3) the Vulcan commanded dryly, causing an outbreak of giggles from the group of six-year-olds sitting two feet away.

Despite the goopy mess dribbling down into the collar of his shirt, McCoy knew enough about child psychology to be devoutly thankful for the laughter of the youngsters. Many of them had lost one or both parents, friends, siblings, pets, homes – and as an old, very wise Authority had once said, laughter did the heart more good than a medicine. The sun was shining, the milieu of gloom clearing, the sounds of children playing in a nearby field cheerfully shattering the morbid silence, and for the first time since their arrival he felt…peaceful.

Even Spock seemed more relaxed, for the hard lines of tension around his mouth eased as the children chattered before them.

"Where's Jim?" the doctor asked after a few pleasant moments.

In the peace of the balmy evening, with the influence of the youngsters currently making faces at each other over the tables in the children's mess tent, the corner of Spock's mouth twitched upward ever-so-slightly. He nodded silently toward the sunny, wildflower-dotted field beside which they had chosen to place the rescued children while their remaining family members were located.

The figure by all appearances running for dear life from a group of at least twelve shrieking five-year-olds was conspicuous by his height and gold shirt. Holding some sort of brilliantly-colored polyrubber ball high above his head as two of the taller children jumped for it, he suddenly veered off and led them in a wide circle, obviously slowing his pace to stay just ahead of the laughing, shouting throng of little ones.

The captain finally went down under a puppy pile of small arms and legs, his shouts for mercy carrying clearly on the gentle breeze and a large upward whoosh of flower petals showing the force with which he'd been tackled.

McCoy's grin nearly split his head in half; it was the best thing he'd seen all day, and by the look of quiet satisfaction hiding behind a Vulcan mask, Spock was pretty glad to see it too.

Ten minutes later, Kirk was returning to the shade of the tent like some golden Pied Piper with the smallest toddler on his shoulders, one child hanging off each pant leg, and the rest following behind in a small procession of partly-front-toothless smiles.

"Chow time, squirt," Kirk said with a grin, swinging the three-year-old off his shoulders with a convincing _vrooom_ing noise, amid a shriek of delight from the little one. The captain's voice lowered conspiratorially as he crouched down before the group of wide-eyed youngsters. "Mr. Spock is a Vulcan, and he is going to give you your soup now. If you're very nice to him," and McCoy resisted the urge to roll his eyes, "…he might just tell you all about the live Vulcan _teddy bear with great big fangs_ he had when he was your age!" (4)

He received a dozen wide-eyed stares, one expression of unholy glee, and a look of abject horror, in that order, and only grinned wickedly at all of them.

"All right, march on over there," he ordered, pointing in mock sternness toward the Vulcan, who was giving him the you-should-be-glad-I-am-no-longer-a-warlike-race-Jim expression. "Hi, Bones," he called cheerfully as the children shuffled into place, giggling. The captain moved to stand beside his CMO. "How's the crew doing?"

"Getting some rest, finally," the doctor reported with gratitude. "I'll be glad when we can get the senior command crew back on a regular sleep schedule, but it'll do for now. Only casualties are from carelessness, and little enough of that."

"Good. The last thing we need is for some well-meaning idiot to get too sleepy to function and drop a crate on himself or – all right, who's flipping the potatoes at me?" the captain bellowed at the nearest group of children, though he obviously was trying hard not to laugh.

A semi-circle of innocently cherubic expressions greeted him.

Spock merely gave him the most smug look any Vulcan ever could without committing cultural sacrilege, and returned to stirring his soup.

"Hmph," he grunted, scowling at the now-tittering children.

Something small and delicate tugged at his trousers leg. "Captain Jim?"

Looking down, he saw one of the tiniest of the little ones, barely five years old, looking adoringly up at him. He'd always been a sucker for enormous brown puppy-eyes (one reason why he could never deny Spock anything, darn the man), and so his heart melted a little as he dropped to one knee before the child, moving slowly as to not scare her away.

"What is it, Nika?" he asked softly. He remembered her name from the roster of children who had lost both parents and a sibling (not to mention her home and pet turtle, she had told him earlier in the afternoon) in the tsunami. The girl's parents had been in the Academy at the same time as he had been, and though he had not known them personally he knew the pain of losing an older brother at least. This little one now knew more tragedy than many beings did in a decade. "You doing all right?"

"This is for you," the child said shyly, fidgeting first on one small foot and then the other before holding up the gift.

A child's daisy-chain, made of the wildflowers that dotted the fields beside the children's mess tent, fashioned into a crown. A fragile offering, from a fragile love forged in tragedy over one short day's time. How to accept such a trust?

He touched the ring of flowers gently with a careful finger, and then smiled at the little one.

And then the captain solemnly bent his head as if receiving a sacred blessing, and let the child place the ring of flowers on it. Her little feet rose on tiptoe so she could arrange the crown with endearing care, and Kirk remained motionless until she had finished, then smiled again as she hugged him tightly and skipped off after a group of her playmates.

McCoy (and every crewman who had stopped to watch, misty-eyed) privately thought he'd never seen anything so ridiculously _adorable_ in his entire life.

Eight hours later, Kirk was still proudly wearing the wreath when he beamed back aboard the _Enterprise_ for the first time in five days; and he really didn't care if half the crew looked at him strangely as he passed in the corridors, trailing daisy petals behind him.

* * *

(1) According to Leonard Nimoy himself, who created the Vulcan nerve-pinch, this is the reason why no human can do it; it's a matter of energy that comes off a Vulcan's fingertips, not a question of strength or pressure.

(2) In _Omega Glory_, it is mentioned that at some point Kirk wanted to learn the thing and that Spock did try to teach him. Helloooo, plot bunny.

(3) Vulcan word for _children_

(4) See _Journey to Babel_. At this point, because it is pre-TAS-_Yesteryear_, I'Chaya hadn't died protecting Spock, so it's not callous for Kirk to bring the animal up.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: My Captain  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, Sulu, misc. others  
**Rating**: T for safety  
**Word Count**: (this part) 7113  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Missing post-_Paradise Syndrome _scene and accompanying baggage, not all of which I addressed here. Spoilers for that episode and _Enterprise Incident_, references to _Where No Man Has Gone Before_.  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_

**A/N: ** _Thank you _to the reviewers who caught my slip with military time - for some reason I overlooked that in my three proofreadings. :)**  
**

* * *

**III.**

It was common knowledge among the _Enterprise_ crew once they began their five-year mission that Mr. Spock did not socialize in his off-duty time (if he even _had_ any, which many of them doubted) with anyone. Eleven years had passed under Captain Pike's command, and in that time the Vulcan had rarely been spotted outside his cabin, science laboratory, or the occasional Rec Room where he would play tri-d chess against the ship's computer. He did not eat with another crewman, chat in the corridors, go on shore leave, visit another crewman's cabin, or even begin a conversation with anyone other than Montgomery Scott (and those were nearly always technical discussions).

It was simply _not done_.

Therefore, when nine weeks into the five-year mission, one of Spock's Xenobiology lieutenants barreled into a card game below decks, out of breath and his eyes about to spring out of his head, his news was taken with a deal of skepticism.

"I'm dead serious!" Robel gasped, gestures animated wildly with the novelty of the thing. "He's in the _gym_, sparring with the _captain_!"

"Oh, come on," Porter, an Environmental Control ensign, scoffed. "Spock doesn't do _anything_ in public, much less anything to do with a _human_."

"He's probably forcing the captain to learn some new self-defense moves after that last mission," Sulu added. "Totally logical that the captain knows how to defend himself against someone strong as those lizard-men were."

"You aren't _listening_ to me, Hikaru," Robel whined with a scowl. "They're not even really fighting with each other – I mean Kirk was laughing his head off at something, and the Vulcan didn't even nail him like he could have, just let him catch his breath before they started again. I swear," he added, smirking at the incredulous expressions that rose around the table, "they look like they're just a couple of children _wrestling_with each other."

Blank silence descended, until Porter accidentally knocked over a stack of potato chips (Kirk kept the no-gambling rule aboard, though he didn't mind them wagering with harmless things like snacks or shift swaps) with his elbow – and then the whole table shouted with laughter at the very idea.

Nevertheless, Porter wasn't the only one who sneaked off at some point during the next two hours to verify the fact that Mr. Spock actually was in the gymnasium, whaling the tar out of his captain in the most genteel way possible.

How could that even come close to being logical?

-ooo-

Word spread quickly on a starship, for the gossip grapevine was usually far more accurate (and interesting) than shipwide reports, and within the week everyone had heard about The Gym Incident, as it was being called now. Granted, it was the first time anyone had seen Spock do anything of the sort in public save a meal with his captain or McCoy, but Hikaru Sulu couldn't see why the lower decks were in such an indefatigable gossip-fest about it. Rumors could get out of hand quickly, and he made sure to keep his ears open for anything inappropriate that could develop.

Thankfully, most crewman aboard the Enterprise had far more sense and better things to do with their time than chat like old women about their superiors' social habits, and so things lulled down after a bit. Nonetheless, word got out that Tuesday evenings could find the two COs of the ship sparring with each other in the gymnasium at exactly 2000 hours, unless otherwise detained, and if either Kirk or Spock noticed that the room suddenly had an influx of exercising young men and women around 1945 neither of them said anything about the fact.

Curiosity can gnaw at the best of men, however, and so one evening Sulu decided to go see for himself what the fascination was with watching Spock and the captain work out with each other.

He wasn't disappointed.

By the time he got there, half the yeomen who were supposedly participating in an aerobics workout had given up all pretense of exercising and were openly gaping (and drooling, in a couple of cases) at the corner that everyone knew was unspokenly off-limits except to their commanding officers.

Spock was in the middle of what looked like a complicated kata, but far more intricate and alien-wild than any Sulu had ever seen in his life. Had to be Vulcan, he decided after only a moment of watching, and it was no wonder half the gym was staring at the graceful, black-clad figure as it whirled through the levels with an apparently effortless grace.

Finally Spock spun to a halt in front of his captain, and for just a nanosecond Sulu would have sworn he saw a shy hesitation in the face of Kirk's admiring smile, before the expressionless Vulcan mask fell back into place and the spell was broken.

"Wow," was Kirk's first (highly intelligent) comment, and everyone within hearing was hard-put to not laugh.

"The first three variations are not difficult," the Vulcan explained, somewhat hesitantly. "They are taught to children as a means to grow in mental discipline and complete physical control."

"In other words, right on my level?" Kirk asked ruefully.

He received such a longsuffering eyebrow that Sulu wondered if that was the Vulcan equivalent of rolling the eyes. "In other words, the proper place to begin if you truly wish to learn," was the dry reply.

The captain's chin lifted in a familiar stubborn gesture. "Ready when you are."

"For the kata to be truly effective, both parties must after the third level be under complete control at every moment, else serious injury could result," Spock warned.

"Then let's stick to the first three for now; it'd look bad on my record for my Science Officer to snap my neck before we've even had a First Contact," Kirk answered, grinning up at the taller man.

"I shall not attempt to do so until then at least, in that case, Captain."

_Holy cats,_ Sulu thought, his brain fizzling under the impact, _did **Spock** just make a **joke**?_

Judging from the amount of eyeballs currently bulging from their sockets all across the gym, he _had_. Talk about going where no man had gone before…

-ooo-

After that, Sulu made it a point to be in the gym every Tuesday to watch the two spar or exercise together; it gave him an entirely different view of his command team and also indicated why they were such a spectacular team – quite simply put, they went together completely. It was like that one missing piece of a puzzle that is the most important and yet you can't find it anywhere around your game table, like the one ingredient missing from the finest recipe – together, they just went from being good to being _perfect_.

It almost got ridiculous one evening, he thought, though he really shouldn't have been laughing with Kirk lying on the floor groaning about a wrenched knee and Spock using his good hand to call McCoy to the gym. He had seen the instant the captain's wary attention had wandered to a shouting match breaking out between two crewmen in the shower next door, and how Spock hadn't been quick enough to halt his momentum in their sparring contest. The distracted captain was too late to block the rush of intent Vulcan leverage.

The next instant, Kirk had been hurtling through the air with a yelp of surprise, amid a chorus of dumbfounded exclamations from watching crew, and a second later a black blur had cleared the nearest bench-press just barely in time to prevent the human from crashing headfirst into the mirrored wall, where the captain would certainly have sustained a serious injury at the speed he was going.

Both tumbled to the ground in an undignified heap of flailing arms and legs and a high-pitched, pained wheeze from Kirk, who ended up on the bottom and was squashed by superior Vulcan muscle and bone mass.

The noise of chatter and clattering of exercise equipment ground to a complete halt.

Spock scrambled up on both arms faster than Sulu had seen anyone move in a long time, and looked down with a double raised eyebrow.

"Ow…" Kirk moaned expressively, then gasped an affirmative to some low-voiced question.

Spock sat back with calm serenity. "Then I believe, Captain, that I win."

Sulu remained dumbfounded at how a man could be coughing that hard and still _giggle_ like a maniac at the same time; but somehow the captain was, and (more surprisingly) somehow wasn't looking like an idiot doing it.

McCoy was less than thrilled when he arrived on the scene, but the rest of the crew had never been so happy to see their captain lose a battle.

* * *

Everyone on board knew that Mr. Spock played chess. Mainly against the computer, and mainly for the purpose of programming it, but he played. And the only two people aboard who had been arrogant enough to ever challenge him – quite nastily, too – had been beaten in less than twelve moves, a severe enough blow to the ego that they crawled back to their laughing comrades with tails between their legs, fairly whimpering in scathing defeat.

Spock never was seen in the Rec Rooms again save to relay messages to his Science personnel or reprogram the computers, and no one ever even thought of asking him to participate in any activities that went on there.

When James T. Kirk became captain, he spent a portion of each evening making the rounds of the Rec Rooms, mainly to judge crew reaction to his presence. One of the braver of the young Engineers who had transferred in along with Kirk and half the remaining crew, invited him to participate in a poker tournament one night between some of Engineering and Environmental Control.

Kirk had hesitated, unsure yet of his new standing among the crew, but after being convinced that the men were genuinely curious about him he accepted; it was a perfect way to get to know his men.

It helped that the brash young captain could bluff his way into a Klingon war-dance and out again, and he absolutely cleaned the entire table out before the night was over.

Finally Kirk rose with a smile, thanked them for letting him participate, and then returned the spoils back to their owners before leaving the room, earning him an instant ten friends aboard.

The next night it was ping-pong, and the next it was Argellian checkerboard, and the following it was basketball in the gymnasium (a sport he was truly horrible at due to his lack of height, though his adoring crew hardly seemed to mind). More personnel began hanging out in the Rec Rooms after shift, hoping that it would be the night the new captain showed up for some personal time with a special few of his men.

This continued for many weeks, until one night after a long day of star-mapping and research on their way back to Earth, after the tragedy that occurred at the Galactic Barrier with Dr. Dehner, Lee Kelso, and First Officer Gary Mitchell. Half the crew in the room were yawning, sprawled in chairs and lazily poking at various hologames or other forms of entertainment, when the doors opened to admit Captain Kirk.

Only this time he was followed, somewhat hesitantly, by Acting First Officer Spock.

The room went strangely silent, as the uniqueness of the situation sunk in, and Sulu (who had been reading in a chair by the wall, enjoying a cup of green tea) glanced up in time to see the two men look slightly taken aback.

Spock tensed visibly, and for all the world looked as if he was going to immediately 'remember' he had duties in Science Lab Desperate; the captain's eyes looked slightly panicked as he too realized he had an edgy Vulcan about to bolt.

Sulu smirked, and 'accidentally' upended his tea mug over the sleeping ensign sprawled next to him.

The half-drowned shriek of surprise that broke the silence and the ensuing chaos took about ten minutes to settle down, and after order had been restored the young botanist was pleased to see Kirk had succeeded in coaxing his Acting First over to the tri-d chess board in the back corner.

Though the atmosphere of the room remained somewhat subdued, it was not an awkward environment, and the majority of the crew soon forgot the captain and Vulcan were there.

Sulu didn't; from where he sat he could hear the distinct sounds of two geniuses at work, and the brilliance of the game nearly blew his mind. The two men discussed the game itself but more importantly the tragic mission that had cast such a pall over the fractured command structure, calmly but soberly talking of what needed to happen when they reached earth.

Kirk lost the match, which wasn't surprising, though to his credit he put up a two-hour fight over it. Sulu expected the man to react poorly, for he had already seen that the captain was fiercely competitive. At the least, he'd thought Kirk would demand a rematch.

Sulu lost all interest in his book, however, when he heard the determined voice behind him.

"Then show me what I should have done, Mr. Spock."

"Are you quite certain you wish me to point out your poor decisions, sir?" The Vulcan was obviously skeptical, accustomed as he was to humans asking advice and then illogically growing irritated when it was bluntly given.

"Always, Mr. Spock. Always."

One word, and it suddenly painted the young man in a brand-new light. Captain James T. Kirk was an impulsive, brash commander that fairly exuded charisma and self-confidence. But he was inexperienced as a starship captain and as a Starfleet propaganda weapon, and cared too much about his people to swagger in as if he owned the _Enterprise_ and the crew aboard her.

Sulu found himself wishing he could be on the Bridge instead of buried every day in the Experimental Botany labs. Possibly he could ask Mr. Spock about being transferred into Tactical as a pilot?

* * *

"Hard about!"

"She's not responding, Captain," Sulu grunted, wrestling with the sluggish controls.

"Shields at fifteen percent, Captain, aft shields buckling." Spock's cool voice calmed the tension for a moment, though the circumstances were dire indeed. "Hull rupture imminent in Decks Seven through Eleven."

"Engineering reports Auxiliary Controls destroyed, sir," Uhura spoke softly from behind him.

Kirk swiveled angrily in his chair, shooting around to face their opponent on the viewscreen. "Port ten degrees, Mr. Sulu. Chekov, divert all remaining phaser power to one intense blast. Target their engineering section, as close to the warp core as you can get it."

The young Russian's eyes widened, but he obeyed along with the others. "Target acquired and locked, sir," he reported a moment later.

The Bridge rocked with the impact of another phaser hit before they could react, the brilliant scarlet beam nearly blinding them all even as the force hurled anyone not grasping his station to the deck.

The captain scrambled to his feet, face set in grim granite. "Return fire, Mr. Chekov."

"Aye, sir. Firing."

Silence.

"Chekov?"

"Direct hit, Captain…but their shields remain at thirty percent. No integral structural damage," the young man reported, swallowing hard.

"Captain, we are being hailed," Uhura informed him gently. "It's a request for our surrender, sir."

"Mr. Spock, if we refuse?"

"With no shields, warp drive, and depleted phaser array, we stand no chance against a ship of that size, whose working systems are comparable to our own," the Vulcan replied woodenly. "I see no alternative in this case."

Kirk grunted grumpily, and punched his inter-ship communications switch. "All right, all _right_, Barclay – we'll surrender. You happy now?"

The main viewscreen lit up with the sight of the Commodore, dark blue eyes twinkling. Behind him, the cadets who had been manning their stations aboard the training vessel's Bridge were high-fiving each other, and the _Enterprise_ crew could hear raucous cheering from somewhere off to the side.

"Was a good fight there, Jim," the man spoke, grinning at the disgruntled Captain Kirk. "You'll be a bit quicker than that if you meet an Orion pirate freighter or something, I hope?"

He received an expressive eye-roll. "You and your ridiculous simulations, Frank."

"It's good for them, Jim," the older man admonished, indicating the beaming young faces around the Bridge. "Even if they're a bit…unprofessionally excited at the moment," he added dryly as something bright-colored (a tunic?) flew through the air behind him. "It's not everyday that a cadet-run simulation beats the _Enterprise_ in a space battle, however fake it was."

"Most probably because the _Enterprise_ has never until now partaken of these simulations," Spock interjected with bone-dry humor.

Sulu saw Kirk's expression soften as he shot the Vulcan a fond look, recognizing the defense for the loyal gesture it was. It made him want to grin ridiculously.

He winked at the pretty female cadet sitting in the pilot's chair on the other Bridge instead.

"Well, it was a good fight anyway, Jim," the Commodore finally said, grinning again. "And thanks for filling in for the _Appomattox_."

"Sure thing," Kirk replied affably. "Getting those supplies to Sherman's Planet was far more important than our postponing shore leave."

"We appreciate it. And these young fools here," Barclay swatted a young man upside the head as he stuck his head curiously in front of the viewscreen to catch a glimpse of the _Enterprise_'s famous crew, "won't soon forget being able to beat the _Enterprise_ in a simulation. They'll be heroes when they get back to the Academy, Kirk."

The captain merely smiled. "_Enterprise_ out."

The screen blinked back into a starry scape, and the Bridge crew turned as one to look askance at their captain. Kirk yawned, placed a hand over his mouth to cover the motion, and then seemed to suddenly realize he was being stared at.

He blinked. "What?"

"Captain…are you feeling well?" Sulu asked warily.

"Mm? Perfectly fine, Mr. Sulu, thank you." The captain nodded and returned to his report-reading.

"But Keptin, you –" Chekov broke off at the scathing look he received from stern Vulcan eyebrows, and hastily turned his attention back to his instruments.

Kirk looked up, his tone stern but eyes alight with hidden mischief. "Mr. Chekov?"

"Nothing, sir, nothing at all," the young man murmured fervently, feeling the heat of Spock's gaze on the back of his neck.

Obviously, Sulu thought with amusement as he watched, Spock knew as well as the rest of them that Kirk had deliberately given poorly-chosen orders, and had all but handed that simulation to the cadet ship. Instead of blowing them out of the stars as they could have done within the first five minutes, they had given the victory (and the dormitory story of the year) to the young, nervous cadets who had been unfortunate enough to land the _Enterprise_ as a substitute for the usual simulated enemy ship.

By virtue of the fact that Spock was breathing down his young protégé's unfortunate neck at the young man's protests against the action, the Vulcan appeared to approve of the captain's unselfish choice.

And that was, in a word, _fascinating_.

* * *

Nobody, not even Sulu via the _Enterprise_ gossip chain, knew what went wrong on this last mission. To all appearances, they got exactly what Starfleet asked for – the Romulan cloaking device – and beyond.

And yet, something happened on that mission, and it wasn't that bull Kirk and Spock were trying to pull before the trouble began about the captain being out of his senses and Spock hating him even though hating is totally illogical and blah blah blah. (The very idea had been utter blasphemy, to anyone with half a brain.) But _something_ had happened, something that created a harsh, sour darkness over the atmosphere on the Bridge for days afterward. Kirk's usual slightly-flippant attitude toward Starfleet Command grew more embittered the more messages that arrived regarding the incident, and Spock withdrew more and more from his fragile contact with the human world as if in response to some unpleasant, silent attack.

Three weeks had passed since they dropped the Romulan commander at the designated Starbase, and the weekly sparring matches had not resumed in the gymnasium on Tuesday nights.

The crew were disappointed, and not a little worried. While to all appearances the two COs were still friendly and seen together outside business hours, some invisible, icy wall had sprung up in a brittle barrier between them – and everyone knew it. Whatever had happened had spread their precious trust so thin that it was in danger of cracking altogether.

Then came the Preservers' Planet, as they had nicknamed it for now, and the two-month absence of the Captain from his ship while they frantically tried to divert an asteroid from obliterating the planet where the captain had last been seen before his unexplained disappearance.

Two _months_.

Spock didn't eat or sleep in those two months, and it had begun after Starfleet Command tried to field-promote him. He refused flat-out, coming as close to insubordination as Sulu had ever heard him on such a public place as the Bridge, and instead threw himself into the problem before them with all the enthusiasm their absent captain would have.

It was a good gamble, Spock's last-ditch attempt to fragment the asteroid – but the poor Vulcan had the worst luck possible, it seemed like sometimes, and the dismal failure absolutely crushed the small confidence the First Officer had managed to cultivate in his ability to take care of Jim's ship. Sulu fairly _felt_ the shy, desperate hope die a lingering death on the Bridge that day, and the light in the Vulcan's eyes died along with it.

The Captain's favorite table stood glaringly empty for weeks in Officers' Mess.

A partially-finished chess game lay collecting dust in Rec Room Two; no one dared move the pieces.

McCoy resorted to shouting and throwing things two weeks into it, and if Spock read the report about damage being done to various pieces of furniture in the CMO's office he never questioned it.

No one dared speak of the impending doom of the planet, and Scotty was in such a white-hot temper that the entire crew avoided Engineering unless absolutely necessary.

Only McCoy was brave enough to talk to Spock about the fact that his meal card had not been used in over a month, and he was rebuffed with such harshness that Sulu found him in the corridor, swearing brokenly at a locked door and obviously trying not to cry in front of junior officers.

No one knew if the captain was even alive, or in what condition – but if something didn't snap soon, there wouldn't be much of a crew to welcome Kirk on his return, the young pilot thought dismally after the fourth day straight of absolutely no small talk on the Bridge, under his own uneasy command while Spock barricaded himself in his quarters and Scott, buried deep in Engineering, pointedly ignored the Vulcan.

They did recover the captain, though no one knew what happened exactly on the planet except that the catastrophe was averted with no apparent damage. Kirk went straight to his cabin upon beaming up with Spock and McCoy, and when he emerged that evening onto the Bridge he was dressed and groomed as impeccably as usual.

The look in his eyes, though – and worse still, the fact that he wouldn't look _Spock_ in the eyes – killed any happiness at having the man back in command.

Kirk signed off on a stack of reports, sitting stiffly in his chair instead of the loving sprawl with which he usually inhabited it, and asked to be updated on the status of the engines. Scott was calm enough, now that he'd had the time to cool off and admit Spock had really done the only thing possible, and the tension there dissipated as the two men discussed measures to be taken for repairs at the next Starbase.

Spock silently sat at his station, correlating data and sending it to the captain's PADD without being asked – almost as if he wished as little conversation with the human as possible – and sorting the reports into the most important ones for Kirk to catch up on.

"Mr. Spock," Kirk inquired, tone utterly void of expression or inflection, "I should like a full report on why our sensor scans failed to locate me on the planet's surface."

"Aye, sir."

"And a list of supplies aboard; we may need to ration a bit before we can limp into a Starbase."

"Affirmative. Correlating lists now, sir."

The exchange was perfectly formal, business-like, and without animosity.

It was also without any emotional undercurrent _whatsoever_, and that was downright eerie on this Bridge.

Sulu exchanged a worried look with Chekov, thoroughly creeped out by the whole thing.

From his half-turned position, he was the first one to see the First Officer's face suddenly drain of color as he bent over his scanner. Spock swallowed, closed his eyes for a moment –

"Mr. Spock!"

Head jerking up at the exclamation, Kirk then shot out of his chair just in time to keep the Vulcan's head from striking the dividing rail, though he couldn't quite keep hold of the limp figure that folded silently to the deck.

"Spock? Spock, can you hear me? Call McCoy," Kirk barked sharply, upon receiving no response from the unconscious Science Officer.

Uhura shot him a longsuffering look, for she had already placed the call and they both knew it – the man simply needed to give orders, to be obeyed, and she understood that.

The captain bent over his inert First, and Sulu saw a look of uncertain sorrow pass over the man's face; until now, he had shown no reaction whatsoever to anything at all aboard. The incident was telling.

He was prevented from thinking further about that when McCoy erupted from the turbolift, looking as if he'd not had much more sleep than Spock recently.

"Get outta the way," was his first grunted directive, and he swiftly ran a medical scanner over the still form.

"Bones…what's wrong with him?" the captain asked in a soft undertone; no doubt he was trying to not let the Bridge hear him but Sulu still could.

"Nothing more than the fact that he hasn't eaten or slept in over sixty days," the doctor snapped, with more venom than Sulu thought the situation warranted. "But you didn't know that, did you, _Captain_? You never thought to ask what _we_ had to do the last two months, now did you? Did you think we were all just sittin' around here enjoying the _view_ while you were on that planet?"

Kirk's mouth opened slightly, a sick expression filling his eyes, but no words were forthcoming.

"I can't believe you gave him all that grief about restoring your memory," the doctor hissed angrily, depressing a hypospray into the blue-clad arm. "You know what a mind fusion does to him! And even without that added stress, even Vulcans can't go two months with no nutrition or REM sleep and expect to not have repercussions – did you never even notice how horrible he looked?"

"Bones, I –"

"Shut _up_," McCoy snapped, loud enough for the Bridge to hear but uncaring if they did. "Just shut _up_ – I don't have time for your _pity parties_, Captain!"

They were all slightly horrified at the liberty, but surprisingly enough, the captain obeyed, looking for all the world like a lost child being reprimanded by a parent.

A soft noise broke the awkward silence, and to everyone's relief Spock raised an unsteady hand to his head before his eyes opened slowly, pale eyelids dragging with unutterable weariness.

"Come on, Spock," McCoy directed with more gentleness than Sulu had ever heard from the irascible Southerner. "Sickbay for you, and some vitamin drips while you sleep for…oh, 'bout a week at least."

The Vulcan's eyebrows drew together, though exhaustion was evident in the way he could barely hold his head up. "As you wish, Doctor," Spock more sighed than spoke, causing the Bridge crew to look askance at each other – it was the first time they'd ever heard him acquiesce to McCoy without a battle of epic proportions.

The captain had remained silent throughout, worrying at his lower lip, but he did reach out to take Spock's other arm and help him to his feet.

Their eyes connected for an awkward moment, and Sulu held his breath, hoping.

But nothing happened. Kirk relinquished his First to McCoy with an admonition to keep Spock in Sickbay until he was fit to be released and not before, and then sat back in his chair while McCoy half-dragged his superior to the lift.

Casting one last disbelieving, sorrowful look back at the command chair, the doctor scowled dark enough to bore holes in the tritanium walls. Then the door shut, hiding them from view.

Kirk looked up from his report. "Mr. Chekov, take Mr. Spock's scanner. Lt. Uhura, please call a replacement navigator for Mr. Chekov's station. Mr. Chekov, those reports I requested, if you please."

Sulu shivered.

-ooo-

After five days of complete rest and what McCoy called 'fattening up the hobgoblin,' Spock was released to light duty. The Vulcan still looked slightly peaky, Sulu thought privately (though he'd never dare say so), but appeared in a much better state than he had been since before these last two nightmares of missions had begun.

Those days had mended something of the shattered atmosphere between the two senior commanding officers; the entire crew had nearly wept or cheered when the captain and Spock ate breakfast together for the first time one morning, and the two had finished their interrupted chess game.

The atmosphere on the Bridge had progressed from arctic to just chilly; granted, this was progress, but hardly ideal. Spock improved much over the next three days, regaining his color and strength rapidly with the grudging acceptance of McCoy's vitamin shots, but the captain himself seemed to be declining as quickly as the Vulcan recovered. Sulu wasn't surprised to encounter Kirk prowling the ship's corridors at well past ship's midnight more than once, and began to worry slightly over the dark circles below the hazel eyes, the tight lines of tension than never eased around the captain's mouth, the tense snapping of his orders where there would usually be a casual affection.

All hell was about to break loose, and he knew it.

Which was why, when one night he stopped by the gymnasium at 2230 hours and saw the captain, he jumped for the nearest inter-comm without another thought.

_"Spock here."_

"Lieutenant Sulu, Mr. Spock. Sir, I…believe you should come to the gymnasium now."

_"Mr. Sulu?"_

"There's a punching bag lying in pieces of stuffing across the room, and the Captain's hand is bleeding. He's running himself ragged on a treadmill now, sir."

_"On my way. Spock out."_

How Spock got to the gym from his quarters so quickly was still an untold mystery, and had to defy a few laws of physics – but it was less than two minutes later that the Vulcan swept past him into the room, after sending him one curt nod of acknowledgement.

And, if he could read the First correctly after all this time, one of gratitude.

He snagged the arm of the only passing idiot curious enough to stop and rubberneck at the scene, and punched a secondary lock code (Spock had already entered his) into the door to discourage any other morons from trying the same.

And then he left, satisfied that his job was done. For now.

-ooo-

Spock remained in the shadows cast by the exercise bikes nearest the door, watching with silent, clueless sympathy as James Kirk desperately attempted to outrun whatever ghost was obviously chasing him.

Finally the captain's shaky legs gave out, and as he clung to the handgrip before him the safety features on the treadmill shut it off instantly. Kirk stood for a moment, chest heaving, braced against the machine as he struggled to catch his breath.

Spock did not know what precisely he should do, only that he must make the attempt or fail miserably in trying.

"Captain."

The human's head jerked upward; obviously Kirk had not heard him enter. The usually animated hazel eyes, now darkened with weariness and pain, looked back at him for a moment over the man's heaving shoulders.

"Did Bones send you down here?" he gasped, rubbing at his chest to ease the ache from trying too hard to catch his breath.

"Negative," the Vulcan answered truthfully.

Kirk gave him a wary look. "Why, then?"

"I…" _want to help you, Jim. Am willing to move the galaxy, defy the powers of the universe itself to relieve the pain you face, partly because of me. Regret that I could not return sooner, that I endangered your ship while you were helpless to stop my inability to lead. That we returned five minutes too late to save your wife and unborn child._ "…thought you might prefer to exercise with a partner. I have…found myself illogically noticing the absence of our weekly sparring matches."

He had not expected the cold animosity well-hidden in Kirk's eyes to thaw and soften at the admission, but it was certainly welcome. A soft smile slightly curved the human's lips. "I've missed you too, Spock," the captain murmured, as he mopped his face with the damp towel he had slung over the nearest weight bench. "But…I'm not really up for much of anything tonight."

Reassuring, but most likely not accurate. "The damaged equipment in that corner tells otherwise, Captain." _Let me help_.

It had been a dangerous observation. Sparks flashed in the human's eyes as the defensive walls snapped back into place. "I don't believe recreational equipment damage reports and human psychology fall within your purview as First Officer, Commander," Kirk spoke quietly – deceptively soft.

"They do when referring to the emotional state of the ship's captain as it is related to his ability to lead the ship effectively. Sir." The addendum was not truly meant as sarcasm, but as a calculated stimulus to produce a reaction.

As a scientist, Spock was well aware of the results of pressure building up inside a container, and of what was necessary to relieve that pressure. James Kirk's command persona was one such container, as shown many times in his distinguished career, and Spock the scientist who carefully monitored and relieved such pressure. By now, years into their mission, he had become an expert in the field without Kirk truly realizing just how much and how well he knew.

It worked; Kirk's voice stabbed chill with every word. "Are you calling me emotionally compromised, Mr. Spock?"

"Negative, at least at this time, Captain," he replied coolly. "I am, however, pointing out that you will not regain your ability to command the crew of this vessel while you still refuse to accept that which is." Ignoring the flash of anger building up in the human's face, he continued with bland equanimity. "Your rejection of the events which happened on the Preservers' Planet is compromising your ability to capably lead this crew."

The flushed coloring of the captain's face had seeped out during that last sentence, leaving him an unhealthy pale. The hand that fiercely wiped perspiration away from the high forehead was shaking.

Spock purposely placed his back against the wall, knowing full well the power of the fire he was about to 'play with', as the Terran saying went, and looked at the shaken human. "Captain, your wife and child are deceased," he stated with a bluntness that drove a spike of pain through even his mental shields, just as Kirk looked like he'd been suddenly punched in the stomach. "Your crew is _not_, and has gone over two months without your command presence. If you cannot assimilate the events of the last week and appropriately control your reactions to them, then I _will_ be forced to relieve you of command."

The captain's face went a shade whiter, but he set his lips in a thin line. "You wouldn't dare," he hissed through a clenched jaw.

He looked down at the shorter man, and forced the words out despite the sick feeling in the depths of his stomach at how familiar they sounded, similar to countless false set-up arguments before their mission with the Romulan cloaking device. "I would, and you are quite aware of it, Captain."

"And just what would you propose to do after you take command, Mr. Spock?" Kirk spat, some color returning to his cheeks with the rush of adrenaline-fueled anger. "Destroy her engines again in a badly-calculated gamble? Take two months to get back to where you should have been only a couple of days later? Or maybe you'll just rip my mind apart to help me _remember_ what I've apparently forgotten about how to command!"

Vulcans do not wince; Spock did internally at least. That last stung far more than it should; but now was not the time for regrets or thought upon the matter. There was much here to discuss, far too many issues to be resolved at a moment like this. For now, the immediate.

"I regret that it took so long for us to return to search for you, Captain; as I explained upon our beam-up from the planet. However, there was no other alternative. I also regret that the events in which you participated during your amnesia are a source of emotional pain for you, but that is hardly the fault of your crew."

The damp towel was flung angrily against the nearest wall. Kirk stormed after it, breathing heavily. "As if you know anything about emotional pain!" he snarled, and drew back a clenched fist to pound the wall.

Spock's quick hand caught the fist before it struck.

And James T. Kirk finally broke.

The next few moments were a blur of struggling, kicking, whirling feints and holds and throws and blows, a raging flurry of emotion-driven impulses that would have overwhelmed Spock's Vulcan controls had he not been prepared in advance for this exact eventuality, even tried to instigate it as gently as he could. Before three minutes had passed, it was obvious that the captain was no longer even aware of him – that he was fighting some enemy only he could see, only he could feel harming him, only he felt he could vanquish by whatever self-destructive means he chose.

Seizing an open opportunity, Spock snatched an unprotected arm as it flailed wildly and applied enough back and downward pressure to drop the human to the mat.

"Captain," he attempted to break through the haze that he could see clouded the man's eyes. "Jim. You must –" His words were rudely choked off by a dirty kick from out of nowhere, which knocked him backward. He had been unprepared for his prize pupil's adept knowledge of Vulcan centers of gravity and balance, and he had underestimated the power of a Kirkian rage.

He would not make the mistake again. He ceased attempting to do more than defend himself, merely let the human battle whatever it was he was seeing, until the captain's movements began to slow from sheer weariness and the adrenal rush's seepage from his exhausted muscles.

After another two minutes it was not hard to capture Kirk's wrist once more. With one quick twist both arms were pinioned securely behind the struggling man. Wide-eyed and trembling with exhausted fury, Kirk went limp with the intention of using leverage to hurl his First forward, but the Vulcan was prepared for him this time and stood his ground, tightening his grip so that the man's arms were wrenched painfully when he tried the move.

Frantic now at being so restrained, Kirk's struggles increased.

After one more well-aimed kick, Spock had had enough. One quick twist of his ankle, and Kirk was on his knees on the mat, arms still securely held behind him in an iron grip.

"_Kroykah_," he snapped, the harsh alien command reverberating off the walls of the gym. "That is enough, Jim. Yield, or you will do yourself harm."

The arms caught fast in his hands were trembling with exhaustion, but there was enough spirit left in the captain for him to make another fierce attempt to twist out of the inexorable grip that held him immobile.

Spock refused to release him, despite the cursing that ensued.

"Let me _go_," the captain snarled, thrashing wildly against the strong grip around his wrists. "That's an order, Commander!"

Knowing he would either regret this for the remainder of his life, or else mend what damage had been done in the last few months, Spock pulled the human backward by the wrists instead of releasing him.

The captain resisted, swearing. "Mr. Spock, so help me –"

"Jim," he finally spoke gently, close to the human's ear. "You forget you are fighting a touch-telepath."

The struggling figure in his grip froze.

"If you truly wished me to release you…I would know," he continued quietly.

Kirk was silent, unmoving save for the fatigued trembling that shuddered steadily through his taut body. Spock could feel the fluttering human heart as it beat painfully, forcing blood through arteries and veins to feed muscles on the verge of exhausted cramp.

He never broke his word – and the captain knew it. "Tell me again, truthfully, that you wish for me to release you, and I shall let you go."

For a moment he could feel only the tension radiating in agony off the human before him, and then as suddenly as if he were a marionette whose strings had been snapped, Kirk slumped back to his knees in limp defeat.

To permit innocent suffering to continue without doing all in one's power to mitigate it was not logical; he had barely released the human's wrists when Kirk had turned and was clinging to him as if he were the last stable thing in his entire universe. Without needing to see his friend – for that he _was_, and only an ungrateful fool would deny that which exists, he could tell the trembling human was weeping silently, releasing the pain of so many losses but this last one especially.

"No." The small whisper when it fell, half-smothered in his shirt, sounded so alone in the silence that he began to think he could actually comprehend the common human expression of the heart breaking. "Please don't?"

He did not.

Could not.

* * *

**Didn't want to ruin the flow with footnotes; the episode referred to in the first part is the pilot episode, _Where No Man Has Gone Before_. In the second episode, _The Man Trap_, Sulu is still seen as a botanist; he later becomes the pilot on the _Enterprise_ Bridge. Speculation on my part there.**

**Episodes referenced in the last section are _Enterprise Incident_ and the one immediately following it in broadcast order, _The Paradise Syndrome_.**

**I had a lengthier h/c scene in mind for the last part but it simply didn't fit with the flow and tone and characterization; if anyone would like to take the open ending and make something of it then by all means be my guest. :)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Title**: My Captain  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Garrovick, various  
**Rating**: T for safety  
**Word Count**: (total) 10,366  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Spoilers are footnoted; in order they are _Obsession_, _Conscience of the King._ Rated mainly for violence. One indirect reference to veiled adult themes in the last part; nothing even remotely graphic (you know me).  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_ **  
****A/N**: The final chapter is planned out well enough, but it's going to take a bit longer to write (you'll see why when it's posted). Plus I haven't written more than a few hundred words for my **startrekbigbang** fic (which only has to be 20,000 words, and this little monstrosity here is already over 30,000 - I've been doing it instead) and really need to get on that. Also, this is being used as a fill for my **hc_bingo** card spot of _kidnapping_.  
**A/N 2**: I will be posting a small additional chapter to give the five and one reasons, so people can see if they guessed right - many already have. Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews - they make my day, even if I can't respond to all of them!

* * *

**II.**

Ensign Jeffery Garrovick was never at the top of his class.

While he was certainly intelligent enough to get into the Academy, and the most well-adjusted individual to pass entrance exams in many a year, his course track was pretty much decided for him due to his lack of specialized aptitude in any particular subject.

He was placed in the Security and Maintenance track, and after a few days of wishing he could handle the tactical requirements for Command cadets decided that life was still good and simply rolled with it. After all, as 'Fleet cadets smugly informed those who scoffed at their choice of life, even cleaning duty on a freighter still put you closer to the stars than any Earth-bound career; and space was in his blood, so he accepted what he could get and was simply grateful to be part of a whole like Starfleet. (1)

No one was more surprised than Garrovick himself, when he discovered he'd been assigned to the _Enterprise_ – requested by the young Captain Kirk himself, according to 'Fleet scuttlebutt – just after the flagship's return from her turnover shakedown cruise.

Over a year later, he learned why Kirk had asked for him, and it wasn't due to any exceptional talents he possessed, unfortunately.

The incident with the cloud vampire (okay, so that's not really what they were calling it in the official logs but heck if that wasn't what he thought of it as, some B-holovid horror creature) had shaken him, he would be the first to admit – and learning that the thing was what had killed half the _Farragut_ crew, including his father, eleven years before, didn't help his nerve any.

Captain Kirk was barely old enough to be his older brother, but insisted upon treating him like a son out of what Garrovick assumed was guilt regarding the incident that decimated the _Farragut_, and while he felt for the man the attention annoyed him – because he didn't deserve any special consideration just because his father had been Kirk's captain years before. His father had known the risks when he joined Starfleet, just like they all had, and had died in his duty; while the loss ached still, Garrovick didn't want pity or special treatment from anyone out of a misplaced sense of guilt.

Garrovick, quite simply, knew that he was nothing above average, and wished that he could have deserved his posting on the _Enterprise_ instead of being handed it on a silver platter for the sake of his surname.

He made the mistake of saying so, when he obeyed the captain's request and talked to Kirk after the cloud-vampire incident.

They were in Turbolift Seven, Kirk heading toward his quarters and Garrovick back to Engineering where he was helping Montgomery Scott continue the ventilation maintenance and cleaning.

Kirk shot him a calculating look, and then halted the lift. "Ensign," the captain began sharply. "I asked to speak with you, because I thought you might want to know more about your father and why I've been acting the way I have these last few days – _not_ because I wanted to hear you denigrate yourself or question my decision to have you aboard."

He'd rarely heard such a stern tone from the captain, and it made him want to crawl away; though to be fair that tone could even back down a Vulcan – he'd seen it happen before. "Sorry, sir," he muttered, eyes downcast.

"There's nothing for you to apologize for, Garrovick," Kirk answered, the coolness melting from the words as he continued. "But I won't have a crewman aboard this ship who has less than healthy self-confidence. Did I ask for you because I knew your father? Yes. Would I have accepted you after looking at your records, if I thought you unworthy to serve on the _Enterprise_? Certainly not. Ensign," and Garrovick glanced up to see a pointed look directed at him, "I asked for you because of who your father was. I _kept_ you aboard because of who _you_ are."

Relief fluttered through the young man's tense posture, and he relaxed. "Thank you, sir," he replied simply. Kirk nodded, and took the directional handle again, directing the lift to Deck Five.

They hadn't reached it when the floor suddenly dropped out from under them with the horrible shrieking of overtaxed machinery.

Garrovick was thrown across the small space, impacting the opposite wall with a bone-jarring thud, and above the ringing in his ears heard a grunt of pain as the captain no doubt had been tossed around the same way. His vision cleared in time to see the lights flashing past the small windows at a dizzying rate as they plummeted downward, and then he wished he hadn't bothered to open them.

Kirk wheezed slightly as the breath returned to his lungs, and managed to pound the emergency override button.

Nothing happened.

"Computer, initiate emergency stop, voice authorization Kirk, James T., Captain," the man barked sharply.

"Voice authorization recognized. Emergency stop initiated," the computer intoned with an ironic cheerfulness.

A squeal of metal on metal, and the humming crackle of emergency force-fields outside their metal prison, and the lift ground to a halt – just six decks from the bottom of the shaft, by the indicator on the wall.

Garrovick resisted the urge to throw up (boy, wouldn't that be professional thanks, vomiting all over his captain just after the man had clapped him on the shoulder and boosted his flagging self-confidence), and hoped the nausea was only residual from the drop – not that his long-buried claustrophobia was going to flare up at this highly inopportune time.

"Oof," he heard the captain mutter as the man hauled himself upright to pound the comm-system. "Bridge, this is Turbolift Seven." During the pause, Kirk extended a hand to help his subordinate to his feet. Garrovick took the offered grip gratefully, and was further relieved to feel that nothing was broken when he finally regained his balance.

"Captain Kirk to Bridge, do you copy," the captain was saying, a note of irritated tension creeping into his voice.

Silence, not even the crackle of interference or static.

"Well, this is wonderful," the captain muttered, and yanked the cover off the inter-comm circuit box below the speaker. "Ensign, see if the emergency escape hatch is fused closed; Scotty's been working on those magnetic seals but they still malfunction sometimes when all systems are down in the lift."

Garrovick stared as the captain began pulling wires out of the box, inspecting them carefully before yanking two of them apart. "Sir, are you certain –"

"Ensign, I went through the Academy on the Command and Navigation track but I minored in Engineering," the captain replied, obviously much amused. "I know enough to find a problem without electrocuting myself. The hatch, if you don't mind?"

Garrovick picked his jaw up off his shirt and tried the hatch. "It's fused shut, sir," he reported, frowning as he saw Kirk examining a blue wire and the melted-off end of a red one, before trying to bypass the circuit via the next conduit in the panel.

A spark shot out when the connection was made, and the captain gave a small disgruntled yelp that only made him want to laugh at his superior.

He was smart enough to not do so; just the same, it was reassuring to see the captain acting like a normal human being and swearing at an inanimate object. "Captain?"

"I can't do anything with this without protective gloves," Kirk finally growled, slamming the casing back down onto the panel. "I know where the problem is, but fixing it's going to require tools other than my fingers, which I'd like to keep in working order."

"Then…we're stuck in here?" he found himself asking, and wished that his voice would remain steady. But how could it, when they could be hours inside this six-foot-square space?

"Apparently," Kirk sighed, and settled down on the floor, one knee drawn up and arm resting upon it. "The alert for a malfunction will have gone off as soon as we started to fall, so I've no doubt crews are on their way. Depending on what the problem is, it might be fifteen minutes, or it might be several hours. I hope you already ate lunch."

He didn't respond, for the simple reason that the words _several hours_ were making his ears ring so badly he could barely hear anything else.

Finally he realized the captain was looking up at him strangely. "You probably will want to sit down at some point, Garrovick," Kirk teased gently, patting the floor beside him.

"Right," he managed, and slid down the wall across from his superior. _Just don't think about it, don't think about it,_ the silent mantra chanted firmly in his head. _It's been years since it even came up, and you don't have any reason to give in to it now_…

"Ensign?" Kirk's concerned voice dipped into the haze of his thoughts. "Are you all right?"

He glanced up quickly, feeling his ears burn in embarrassment, but the unconcealed worry in the captain's eyes melted his resolve to not tell the truth.

"I…don't enjoy enclosed spaces, Captain," he admitted with more than a hint of mortification.

An eyebrow rose slowly, and he felt a giggling urge to ask whether the captain had picked the habit up from Commander Spock, or vice-versa. _Hysteria_, _Jeffery_, the next thought informed him. _Wonderful_.

"And you decided to go into space, Ensign?"

"Normally it doesn't bother me at all, Captain," he said, and the familiarity of speaking in clinical terms relaxed him somewhat. "Jefferies Tubes don't scare me, neither do caves or anything like that…"

Kirk's gaze narrowed, but in understanding rather than in blame. "Unless you know you can't get out," he finished quietly.

Garrovick nodded, firmly gulping down the urge to squirm at the words. There was no reason for them to panic; if he knew Mr. Spock at all (and he should, after the Vulcan saved his life today) the First was probably raising Cain up above them somewhere and would have Engineering crews on the job within seconds. They'd be fine in the meantime, perfectly fine.

He repeated this to himself under his breath twice, hoping Kirk would not think less of him, and only received a sympathetic look from the man before silence fell again. After five minutes, the captain yawned easily, and closed his eyes against the wall of the lift; apparently content to wait patiently for rescue. Garrovick himself slowly relaxed as the seconds ticked by, and two minutes later had nearly brought the nausea under control again.

And then the lift shuddered, the unearthly groan of straining metal shattering the placid silence, and tilted abruptly to one side.

Kirk's eyes flew open at the noise, though he could not prevent being slid across the floor as the lift shifted and then remained at an angle in the shaft.

Garrovick could barely breathe.

"Okay…" the captain muttered, cautiously shifting forward on his hands and knees, much closer to the wide-eyed ensign. "I don't think that was supposed to happen, but either way the force-fields are still holding us up. Even if the emergency stop mechanisms malfunction, we still won't be going anywhere." He paused, and then frowned. "Ensign, take a deep breath. _Now_."

This last was a snapped order, diving sharply into the cloud of alarm that had begun to encase his brain, and Garrovick inhaled quickly, closed his eyes until the rising panic had subsided.

"Good," he heard Kirk's encouraging murmur, and the man shifted to a comfortable position beside him.

"Sorry, sir," he spoke at last, and was pleased to find his voice had steadied in the last thirty seconds.

"No need to be," the captain returned easily. "You're dealing with this far better than most men would who aren't claustrophobic to begin with. And there's no shame in being afraid of something, Ensign – only in being incapable of controlling that fear. You'll never command anyone, let alone yourself, if you can't fake bravery when you have to."

He took a deep breath, and felt calm settle over him once more. "Thank you, sir."

Kirk's lips twitched in a brief smile, and they were silent for another few minutes.

"Do you remember the mission on Lhassus II last month, Garrovick?" The question came out of nowhere, and the suddenness of it startled the ensign.

After he'd jumped in surprise, he nodded. "Aye, sir."

Kirk smiled thinly, sliding his gaze over to catch his subordinate in his periphery. "Did you know I am absolutely petrified of snakes?"

Garrovick blinked. "But the inhabitants of Lhassus II are reptilian, Captain, and you had to negotiate a mining rights agreement with them –"

"Exactly, Ensign."

Oh.

_Oh_.

For the first time, he smiled, and Kirk grinned wryly back at him.

Then the lift shuddered slightly as a pounding commenced overhead. "I _said_ I'm almost there, Mr. Spock," an exasperated Scottish burr reached their ears through the ventilator in the ceiling of the lift. "I canna climb any faster than that! Blasted Vulcan," and this last was obviously muttered under the Scotsman's breath. "'I dinna have emotions,' muh sainted aunt…"

The two men's eyes met.

The Chief Engineer was relieved when, instead of discovering badly-injured crewmen, he found the captain and Ensign Garrovick laughing uproariously inside the damaged turbolift.

And he for one dead sure wasn't about to tell them (or Spock, for that matter) that the emergency force-fields had malfunctioned as well, and that the lift had been dangling precariously in the shaft by only half its emergency stop mechanisms.

* * *

Some time later, Kirk promoted Garrovick to Lieutenant; and the young man didn't miss the glint of humor in the captain's eyes when he was informed he'd be overseeing turbolift maintenance, among his other duties.

Garrovick also went on the odd landing party, for which inclusion he was devoutly grateful (even if he wasn't badly claustrophobic, he still got cabin fever like anyone else), and this away mission was one of them. The planet was rich in agricultural resources, though a recent outbreak of Rigellian fever had rampaged through the farming areas and as a result had decimated the population, leaving whole acres of various grains and vegetables rotting on the stalks and vines. The _Enterprise_ had been diverted to the planet due to still having a goodly store of the cure aboard from their own mini-epidemic a few weeks previously (2). Their mission: to halt the progression of the plague and thereby save the fragile economy of the Federation colonies on the planet, which relied heavily on the farmers and their crops for the foundation of their exchanges.

The area being similar to Earth's Midwestern regions, not even Spock's regulation-quoting would keep an Iowa farm boy from beaming down with the landing party, and so Kirk joined McCoy's team on the Transporter Pad with an expectant smile, despite the gravity of their mission.

Garrovick was accustomed by now to the transporter effect (and also accustomed to their irascible CMO's grumbling about it), and no longer faced the nausea that accompanied many when going through it for the first dozen or so times, even looked forward to the experience. But when they materialized in the midst of the most open field Lt. Kyle had found near an infected farmstead, the stench that struck them in a rotting, boiling wave of decay turned even his steady stomach.

"Ugh," one of McCoy's nurses exclaimed succinctly, raising a hand to her nose, and the doctor himself shook his head in distaste before ignoring the smell, as he behaved with any disgusting task in his chosen field.

None of them were expecting the captain to suddenly turn white as a sheet, take a stumbling step aside, and then fall to his knees, to empty the contents of his stomach into the nearest clump of matted weeds.

Garrovick was already moving, alarmed, but McCoy beat him to the captain by a mile. The tricorder whirred and whistled over the trembling man – was he really _hyperventilating_? He raised questioning eyes to his Security boys, who only stared blankly at him; obviously none of them knew why Captain I-can-ignore-a-fatal-wound-for-days-if-I-have-to Kirk had reacted so poorly to the smell of rotting vegetation – maybe he was already feeling sick?

He perked up at the sound of whispering between the two men a few paces before him. "Rotting grain," the captain was murmuring, dragging a sleeve across his eyes. "Sorry, Bones. Just, the smell…haven't smelled anything like it since…" he swallowed, taking a controlled breath.

McCoy's blue eyes suddenly went a soft cornflower color; obviously the doctor had made the necessary connection even if the rest of them were clueless (which they were). A gentle hand came to rest on the captain's heaving shoulder.

"I think you should beam back up to the ship, Captain," McCoy spoke quietly, though with a warning edge. "It's not like you're necessary to the mission here; all we're doing is delivering and administering the drugs, nothing else."

Kirk staggered abruptly to his feet, shaking his head. "No," he replied definitively, though the color had not returned to his pale face. "I'm all right; just the shock of the smell at first…"

"Jim –"

"I am _fine_, Doctor McCoy," Kirk snapped, in that particular tone that let the older man know it was the Captain and not Jim speaking. "Now come on; let's find that farmstead."

The physician scowled but brought up the rear as the rest of them, after looking blankly at each other, shrugged and followed the stiff figure of their captain.

Garrovick's curiosity increased when he heard McCoy drop behind them several paces and quietly comm Spock on his communicator.

_"Spock here. What is it, Doctor?"_

"The whole farm's gone to ruin," the physician said, voice tight.

_"I fail to see your immediate concern, Doctor, nor why you are breaking regulations in contacting the ship without the captain's orders." _

Yes, Garrovick was interested in that too; and besides, as Chief of Security planetside it was his duty to protect his commanding officers. He lingered for a moment, just to keep an eye on McCoy of course.

"_Shove_ the captain's orders for a minute," the CMO hissed. "It smells worse than a distillery down here. Like _rotting grain_, Spock. Like an _agricultural_ _plague_."

Silence.

When it came again, the Vulcan's voice was quieter, as if he did not want to be heard by the rest of the Bridge crew. _"Do you need me to beam down, Doctor?"_

"No, he says he's fine and he wants to keep going."

_"Naturally he did. As I said, do you need me to beam down?"_

McCoy cast a wary look around. "Better not. But I thought you'd want to know…keep an eye on him tonight, at least."

_"Understood."_

"McCoy out."

No less mystified than before (not least because it was the first time he'd heard those two speak together without the metaphorical fur flying), Garrovick scrambled back behind the wilting cornstalks that had fashioned as his cover and quickly caught up with the trail of crewmen that were heading for the farmhouse.

Stranger things had happened on a landing party, but still…

-ooo-

He never did find out why exactly that smell had triggered such an extreme reaction in the captain, but if the man felt even half as bad as he looked, then he had Garrovick's complete admiration for the way he conducted the mission as if nothing had happened.

They were on the planet's surface for almost ten hours, doling out the cure to the worst affected areas and splitting up for part of that time to cover more ground. When they parted ways the last time, McCoy shot the young lieutenant a scathing look that clearly said _watch out for him or I will see you miserable at your next physical._

Garrovick was observant enough to know he meant it, and smart enough to be very afraid.

He was also wise enough to know to keep his mouth shut when, late that ship's night, he nearly bowled over Spock in the main corridor on Deck Five; the Vulcan only looked at him over the tray full of the captain's favorite foods (the ones that turned McCoy's blood pressure into a thing of beauty) and gave him a curt "As you were, Lieutenant" before continuing to ring the captain's entry chime.

It was inexcusable in an officer, but who could really blame him for listening, safely out of sight around the next corner?

"Captain."

Silence.

"_Captain Kirk_," and this time there was a definite note of Vulcan sternness infused into the words.

More silence.

A small huffing noise; surely it hadn't been Spock sighing, but what else could it have been? "You are aware that I have an override clearance for your quarters, Captain?"

Muffled words through the inter-comm; Garrovick couldn't quite make them out, but they sounded like a curt command.

"Unsatisfactory," and Spock's voice was accompanied by the _beep-boop_ing of an override code being entered into the keypad by the door. "Besides, I have no desire to become collateral damage in your cross-fire with Dr. McCoy."

The swoosh of an opening door at last, and an indignant exclamation from inside.

Then Kirk's voice, clearly annoyed and carrying down the entire corridor. "I _told_ you, I wish to be left alone, Mr. Spock, and furthermore you can tell McCoy that he can take his coddling and – is that German chocolate cake?"

"Affirmative."

"Bones sent you down here with _that_?" And yes, that was definite interest perking through the irritation in the captain's voice.

A short pause. "Negative, Captain. Dr. McCoy did not specifically design the meal; merely ordered me to bring you sustenance and see that you consumed it."

Silence.

"Mr. Spock, I like the way you think. Mmm."

"No doubt," was the dry reply. "May I come in, Captain, or would you prefer I remain standing in the corridor – Jim. That is highly unsanitary. There is an eating utensil on the tray if you wish to sample the cake icing before partaking of your full dinner."

Garrovick snickered softly, then stiffened as he remembered – _Vulcan hearing_. No way could Spock not have heard that from just around the corner.

Only one intelligent thing to do, then; and he could do it in good faith now, knowing the captain was going to be all right.

He fled, laughing his head off. (3)

* * *

"We have to stop meeting like this, Lieutenant."

The humor was weak, and they knew it, but Garrovick appreciated the effort just the same after this disastrous first contact. "Indeed," he replied smoothly, knowing that the Spockian inflection would further lighten the tension – which it did; Kirk grinned unabashedly despite the awkwardness of their position.

"Anything with the communicators yet?" The tension having dissipated, the captain was back to all business, whispering so as to not be heard by the guards outside their prison. Primitive though it was, the stone walls and iron bars were quite effective in preventing escape – and the strange energy weapons the guards held shot down any hope they had of disarming them. The beam the rifles emitted would paralyze a man for at least ten minutes, locking his entire body's joints into a horrific mimicry of tetanus. More painful than a phaser stun, and with far more lasting effects on the joints and nervous system.

Kirk had found that out the hard way upon awakening the first time and promptly provoking one of the guards.

Angie Mallory, the yeoman who had been unfortunate enough to survive the other two members of the initial First Contact landing party, had died from a repeated stun from the weapon before Kirk had awakened; the fiery young woman had a quick wit and tongue that would have done her captain proud, but the warriors guarding them had had enough and were ruthless enough to not care about the girl's condition. Garrovick still felt sick over that, and was only glad the captain hadn't been awake for the poor girl's death and that they'd removed the body before Kirk had shaken off the effects.

"Nothing," he replied from the corner of his mouth, concentrating on rewiring the two communicators. He'd no special skills in engineering, but he had more practical knowledge of slightly-dangerous-and-not-regulation hotwiring than Kirk, due to hanging about Montgomery Scott on a weekly basis aboard ship.

Plus, after that one mission where he, McCoy, Lt. Kyle, and Kirk had been separated from the rest of their party on the icy glaciers of Gamma Tortugus, Spock had taken him and the other Security lieutenants aside and 'instructed' (read: threatened them with demotion and the Vulcan Glare of Death if they failed the captain again) them to familiarize themselves better with techniques for signal boosting in adverse conditions.

If Garrovick didn't get them out of here, Spock was going to have his hide. Probably literally. And the captain wasn't looking too good after the effects of that stun; he needed to hurry if he was going to be of any use to the man at all.

He screwed a conduit back into place, after adding the amplification crystal from the other communicator to the power module in conjunction with the broadcast transmitter, and gave the thing an experimental shake-tap.

The instrument chirped normally for a second, and then screeched in a burst of subspace static loud enough to wake the dead. And definitely loud enough to alert the two guards, who had missed the communicators during their cursory search of the two prisoners; the officers had slipped them into their boots.

It was the first time he'd ever heard his captain swear worse than McCoy.

-ooo-

"I'm assuming you have a death wish, Garrovick."

The lieutenant's face burned as the captain spoke, glaring over the shoulder of the guard who was hauling him along the stone corridor.

The hulking brute (who understood not a word of standard, Vulcan or Klingon – Kirk had tried insults in all three before being shot with the force of the humanoid's energy weapon) snarled something in his own tongue and backhanded the man for speaking. Garrovick winced at the resound from the blow, but knew better than to move to Kirk's aid as he'd already tried once with painful (and ineffective) results.

The captain spat blood onto the stone beside the guard's feet, and glared defiantly up at his captor, somehow managing to look dangerous despite his arms being bound behind him and looking like death was, if not knocking on the door, at least trying to find a parking space out front.

Neither of them were foolish enough to make a break for it, not with those energy rifles pointed at them, nor did they attempt to speak again for it was obviously useless. They were regarded as alien infidels, and as such were to be disposed of in the usual manner (or at least that's what it looked like; Garrovick doubted they were to be entertained as gods). Needless to say, if they were rescued, the Federation would be told this planet was not _quite_ ready for contact with advanced races.

They were both shoved finally into a small, windowless room at the end of the corridor and left there.

"Here, sir, let me help you," the lieutenant spoke quietly, moving over to where Kirk lay sprawled from the force with which he'd been propelled inside. Garrovick had wisely kept his mouth shut and his hands in plain sight when he saw how roughly Kirk was treated after putting up a show of resistance, and so his hands had been left free.

The captain was coughing, struggling to his knees in the mud of the tiny room.

Wait, mud?

He stared at the sloppy gunk on the floor, wondering why the heck the room was so damp if their previous cell had been dry enough, but began working on the knots of the ropes that bound the captain's hands.

"How's the head, sir?" he asked conversationally as he worked.

"Considerably substandard," Kirk replied, though with that whimsical humor that characterized his dealing with tense situation. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he added as the ropes fell away, and rubbed his wrists gratefully.

Garrovick nodded, growing nervous of a sudden – his Security instincts flaring for some unknown reason. "Sir…"

"I know," Kirk answered uneasily. "We know they just want to be rid of us. So why would they move us unless…" he trailed off, as a rumbling reverberated in the walls.

Rumbling – sounding like an approaching thunderstorm.

The airtight room, only ten feet high and about eight feet wide.

No windows.

Mud on the floor.

"Oh crap," he whispered, at the exact moment water began to pour in through camouflaged pipes in the stonework.

Kirk had been directly under a deluge when it began, and now splashed his way back toward his subordinate, coughing out water as he came. "My sentiments exactly, if in more colorful terms, Mr. Garrovick," the man muttered, glancing worriedly about.

"What is this time period, the planet's equivalent of the Dark Ages and its torture devices?" he asked, nearly shouting above the noise of the rushing water.

"Evidently," the captain called back, as he experimentally began kicking at the stonework around the small room. "That party who caught us seemed to be a religious sect of some kind. Makes sense that they would have their own sort of Spanish Inquisition."

"Only they skip the torture and just _dispose_ of their problem people," he added under his breath, shivering when the water hit his knees.

The captain splashed back over to him, eyes beginning to look slightly pinched. "The stonework's solid, around the bottom at least. We'll have to wait for the water to rise to check around those pipes," he said soberly.

"Too bad this stone is full of magnetic ores," he replied, more for something to talk about than to really be helpful. "Mr. Scott can't lock onto our transponders with all that magnetism in the rocks…"

"So we're on our own, Lieutenant." The flat voice did nothing to boost his spirits, but he knew by now that Kirk was not one for coddling.

Good thing, too, because three minutes later the water was already covering his waist.

Kirk, being three inches shorter, was standing rib-deep in it.

"You don't think –"

"That someone's going to come after us?" Kirk finished, eyebrow rising quizzically. "They'd better not, or I will court-martial them myself. The Prime Directive is still in effect here; orders are to leave any landing party to the traditions and devices of the natives if an unintentional First Contact goes wrong."

"Well, that's encouraging." He'd like nothing better than to see the Commander appear right about now, phasers blasting through the door...

Garrovick suddenly had an insane image of a Vulcan in Wild West cowboy gear, guns blazing, and realized impending death was beginning to warp his thinking. _Shape up, soldier_, he growled internally; they had to find a way out of here in the next ten minutes or…

He shook himself sternly; the water was shoulder-deep now and he could bob up to examine the lowest of the pipes in the water. As he'd been realistic enough to not get his hopes up, he was not overly disappointed to discover the stonework was solid through and through.

"No luck," he reported, dropping his feet back down to the ground. The water was chin-deep now.

Chin-deep – that meant it was already lapping over the captain's nose! He turned a slightly panicked look to the older man, only to find Kirk calmly treading water two feet away. The captain smiled slightly at his relieved expression.

"Keep calm and save your energy," Kirk directed as the water rose another three inches in the small chamber.

"For what?" he could not help but retort, for he could see no way out of this. 'Why bother?"

"Survival, Lieutenant," Kirk snapped, the sound cleaving through the rushing water like a knife through butter. "If you _die_, then die like a Starfleet _officer_."

He swallowed, and then realized he now had to swim himself; they only had another four feet before the water reached the ceiling. It had taken the water about eight minutes to reach six feet; they had less than that left.

The captain said nothing, only concentrated upon treading water as rhythmically as he could, and he could do nothing but follow that calm example.

After another two minutes, when he could actually reach up and brush the stone ceiling, he spat out a mouthful of muck as it washed into his face and then looked at Kirk. "Captain."

The man's eyes lightened, obviously coming out of a state of deep concentration. "What is it, Lieutenant?"

He bobbed for a moment on the surface of the water, and then gathered his nerve. "Are you afraid to die, Captain?"

Kirk's breathing was becoming slightly labored; the effects of the stun earlier upon his system and the effort of remaining afloat were beginning to tell. "To die, Lieutenant?" A slightly self-deprecating laugh broke past the compressed lips. "What sane man is not, when it all comes down to it? I admit, though…I always hoped I'd go up with my ship when the time came. That's…how it should be."

The soft confession nearly broke the younger man's heart.

The muffled churning of the water below filled the silence for a moment, and then suddenly a spasm of pain crossed the captain's face – one of his arms had locked up again, a side-effect of the energy weapon that had already taken place once this afternoon.

Garrovick lunged forward through the murky depths, grabbed the flailing hand and yanked Kirk above water once more. After a painful burst of coughing, the captain nodded his thanks, lips pressed tightly together in an effort to concentrate his energy on surviving.

They had only a foot of space left between them and the stone ceiling; not long to go.

He kicked his legs idly, letting his arms have a rest from their continual movement, and wondered how the captain could still be keeping himself afloat; he'd been treading water far longer than the lieutenant had, and was battling the effects of a massive paralytic stun to boot.

He could have kicked himself for jinxing the poor man when a moment later the sandy hair disappeared, slipping under the surface of the water amid a desperate splash. It took several precious seconds to grab hold of the gold shirt and haul the captain up by it – Kirk was small, but all compact muscle and as such weighed a fair ton – and several more to hold him while he coughed up the water he'd inadvertently swallowed.

They had only inches between their heads and the ceiling now. Kirk coughed weakly, turned a somber gaze on him, and he suddenly realized with a very sharp, agonizing clarity that he was in all probability going to have to watch his captain drown before he lost the strength to continue himself.

The only thing scarier than dying, he suddenly realized, was having to watch someone else die – someone you respected, cared about.

He saw by the soft light in the captain's eyes that the man had divined his thoughts and understood perfectly – which was why, a moment later, Kirk silently slipped below the surface again, having refused to cling to his subordinate for help in remaining afloat.

-ooo-

He remembered panicking then, remembered flailing into the water after his drowning captain, remembered with startling clarity the jolt of surprise and wondering where the shimmering brilliance was coming from – heaven help him if the old cliché about 'going toward the light' were true after all – remembered suddenly thudding against a cold, hard surface with enough force to make him literally squeak in surprise and lack of breath.

Remembered a chorus of startled yelps and shrieks as three hundred cubic feet of water materialized with them and promptly flooded the Transporter Room, drenching everything and every_one_ in it before Scott could activate an emergency flood drain.

Remembered – always _would_ remember – the look in a very dripping Commander Spock's eyes when he dropped to one knee beside the captain, who lay coughing faintly, eyes closed, on the other side of the Transporter Pad.

Remembered Dr. McCoy's swearing – and looking like a half-drowned brown-and-blue guard dog as he pushed Scotty aside and bounded up the steps with a med-team – and subsequent thanking him for getting that single blast of signal out before their communicators had been confiscated. Evidently, that burst of subspace static on a frequency no pre-warp civilization would have been able to generate had been enough for them to be generally located; Spock and Scott had already been working to recalibrate the sensors enough to cut through the magnetic ores, and when they'd believed they had located two dying prisoners they simply beamed up the two life-signs. Due to the interference, Scott had just had to lock onto whatever he could in the small room and beam it up – hence the impromptu flood.

Garrovick's mind boggled at the fact that they had, in essence, _gambled_ that the two fading life-signs were two of the missing landing party; Spock's glare when he used the (logically-accursed) word shut him up instantly, but not before he wondered how they were going to explain _that_ risky chance to Starfleet Command.

Some days, he was awfully glad he was only in Maintenance and Security, and _not_ officer material.

* * *

Jeffery Garrovick remembered the fourth year of their five-year mission for two main reasons. The first reason was that he was promoted to Assistant Security Chief, second in command to Lieutenant-Commander Giotto.

The second reason was that, near the end of that year, Captain Kirk disappeared without a trace while on shore leave.

For five weeks.

Starfleet at first had reluctantly declared their poster boy AWOL, despite Spock's firm insistence that Kirk would never have voluntarily abandoned his command, under any circumstances – but they couldn't even get Command to let them search for their missing captain until one night late in the third week, when Sulu and Chekov, prowling about _incognito_, had finally pounced on a lead in a shipyard on the planet from which Kirk had disappeared.

From there, the case was not hard to piece together, and the answer only too clear - even he, not as expert in matters as the more experienced Giotto, could see it as Spock slowly detailed the chain of evidence in their unofficial briefing (he was quite impressed that the First had without question hacked the Security tapes to erase all log of this meeting, due to Command's informing them that they were to regard Kirk as a deserter – _as if_.).

"The conclusion is inevitable," the Vulcan spoke, and Garrovick noted the entirely expressionless countenance with a worried glance at Dr. McCoy; everyone who had three brain cells aboard the _Enterprise_ knew Spock was only one-hundred-percent-stone-faced-Vulcan when he was in reality feeling the exact opposite. Spock glanced around the table, lingering for a moment on the haggard features of their CMO.

Giotto saved the Vulcan from having to say it. "Orions, has to be," he muttered fiercely, hands clenched on the table.

Spock nodded, the crease between his brows deepening. "Slave traders, to be exact, Mr. Giotto. It is the only logical conclusion."

Burying his face behind one shaking hand, McCoy made an inarticulate sound of broken horror, which earned him an entirely unVulcan look of sympathy along with the human ones. "Doctor…"

"Don't even," the physician breathed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Just tell me you have a plan to track them down."

Spock lowered his gaze. "At the moment, I do not."

"You can't just sit here doing nothing then! Spock, you know what Orions _do_ to good-looking slaves, who they sell them to – you can't let that happen! They – they'll –"

"_I know, Doctor_!" And Garrovick jumped at the sudden, painful harshness of the tone, casting a stupefied glance at the wide-eyed Acting First Officer Sulu sitting across from him, who was wisely staying out of the cross-fire. Spock closed his eyes, carefully unclenched the hand that was threatening to bend the edge of the durasteel table. Finally he glanced up, met McCoy's pleading gaze. "I know, Doctor," he added, softly. "Believe me, I know."

Sulu's PADD beeped, carrying a message from Uhura. "Starfleet Command says we can have a week to investigate," he reported, breaking the uneasy silence that had fallen. "But if we don't come up with a lead in seven days –"

"You'll be wearin' command gold instead of science blue, Mr. Spock," McCoy added with morose despair.

"I will not," was the cool but emphatic reply, and the tall figure stood, signifying the end of the meeting. "Mr. Sulu, assume the conn for the next two hours while I am in the brig, interrogating the prisoner you and Mr. Chekov apprehended this evening. Dismissed. Doctor, Mr. Giotto, Mr. Garrovick, remain please."

The others filed quickly out of the room, leaving the four of them looking uneasily at each other. "Mr. Giotto, Mr. Garrovick, when we locate the captain I will most likely need a team experienced in covert operations. Any of your men that speak Orion may also be helpful," Spock said, studying the PADD before him. "You will also notify Mr. Scott that he is to prepare a modified shuttlecraft capable of defending itself against an Orion slave ship. I trust that we shall not be forced to use a shuttle instead of transporters, but it is as well to be prepared."

"You'll have no shortage of volunteers for this one, sir," Giotto answered fervently, and Garrovick agreed with a nod.

"Doctor, you will accompany the rescue team; we…may be in need of your particular expertise." Everyone pretended to not notice the hesitation in the Vulcan's voice, or the implications they all knew lurked behind the words.

"Spock, why in the world would they have grabbed Jim just like that?" McCoy asked despondently.

"The Captain was abducted the same night as eleven others from that area of the planet's recreational facilities, Doctor; he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, I suspect. Furthermore, it is highly doubtful that they were aware of his rank and occupation, as he was not in uniform."

"But…"

"Which means, Doctor, gentlemen," Spock continued, thin lips set grimly, "that we can only hope they discovered his identity and are viewing him as more valuable to them as a Starfleet officer, rather than a…an attractive slave. The…physical ramifications for the former might be more severe, but preferable to the lifestyle inflicted upon the latter."

Garrovick thought he might be sick.

-ooo-

The Assistant Security Chief had only heard about a Vulcan mind-meld, or _mind-fusion_ as they were also called, but knew the Captain seemed to view it as a thing of wonder, slightly in awe of it. McCoy harbored a healthy distaste for the whole kit and caboodle of telepathic abilities, the entire ship was aware and amused by, but also seemed to regard it from Spock at least as a fairly normal occurrence. Extremely private and personal, according to all accounts, but an ability to be viewed with respect – even enjoyment, according to the sole time he'd seen the Captain receive information from Spock on a covert mission when audible communication had been impossible.

He hadn't ever seen the Vulcan do a mental-contact himself until now, but he was _fairly_ certain the other party wasn't supposed to end up on the ground, curled in a fetal position and whimpering mindlessly.

The horrified, wide-eyed stare coming from McCoy just now as Spock literally dropped the man and simply stepped over his prone figure somewhat supported that hypothesis.

The doctor's medical tricorder whirred surreptitiously. Spock cast him a patient eyebrow. "Doctor, please save your concern for the captain; I assure you I am perfectly in control. This way, gentlemen."

"I know you are, Spock," the physician whispered, swallowing hard as he passed the gibbering Orion lying on the ground. "That's what's scarin' me."

Garrovick was _beyond_ scared; he'd never seen their gentle First Officer ruthlessly, calmly, _cleanly_ empty the corridors in the facility with the fluid ease that made him truly want to believe the traditional tales that Vulcans had once been a warrior race.

Though, if what the Orion had said just now in that half-Spock/half-petrified-slaver voice in the meld was true…these animals deserved worse than they were getting. He could only hope the slaver had been exaggerating the captain's condition, or there might be some nasty cleanup over this mess (that was the worst part about a promotion, having to do the paperwork), not the least of which was one Vulcan First Officer on a perfectly logical rampage through an Orion political prison on a deserted moon.

The rescue party had been just the four of them – Spock, McCoy, himself, and poor Ensign Jacoby. Jake had taken a disruptor blast to the leg just after their beam-in and had had to be emergency-transported back to the _Enterprise_ in an effort to save his limb from having to be amputated, to in turn save him from bleeding out. Now it was just the three of them against the entire facility's guards, and scarily enough that didn't seem to bother Spock at all.

Their infiltration had been so smoothly executed that they as of yet hadn't raised an alarm, and had nearly succeeded in incapacitating the small facility's guards, which were surprisingly few. Each of the Orions had been taken prisoner and sent back to the _Enterprise_ brig, and now they were down to the lower levels of the nearly-deserted place. Garrovick could feel immediately the difference in temperature and atmosphere; cold and clammy, from the depth the damp stone had been excavated into the moon's inhospitable rock surface.

"Pneumonia," he heard McCoy muttering to himself, obviously listing what he needed to be prepared for in an effort to calm his jumpy nerves. "Possibly pleurisy, if it's been this damp down here…general antibiotic and vitamin stabilizer for starters, and maybe –"

"Quiet, Doctor," Spock hissed suddenly, and flattened himself against the craggy stone wall, just one more shadow in the mass of them that lurked there.

Garrovick followed suit, McCoy a moment later, and a few tense seconds passed until a shadow came around the corner.

Spock didn't waste time or energy; the Orion fell like a ton of brick and the Vulcan didn't even look back as he moved on down the corridor, following the instructions he'd obviously taken from an unwilling mind minutes before.

McCoy sighed, stuck a recall transmitter on the guard, and signaled Scott to beam up another one; hopefully, if what their interrogated prisoner had said was true, there were only two more of them down here, making fifteen total for the small facility.

Garrovick waited to make sure the man dematerialized properly through the rock and was annoyed to see that Scott could not complete the transporter lock; the Orion still lay there, unconscious. If they needed emergency beam-out, that would be a problem; phaser carefully in hand, he began to keep a sharper eye out for more guards or booby-traps in case they had to run for it back to the upper level.

He came around the corner just in time to see McCoy viciously chop a hypospray into the jugular of one of the two remaining guards while Spock took down the other without a sound.

"That, I believe, should be all of them, gentlemen," Spock intoned, inspecting the door in front of which the guard had been standing.

Garrovick noted the slight shaking of the hands that probed the locking mechanism, and wisely said nothing about it. "We can't beam through this rock, Mr. Spock; the last guard didn't dematerialize. We'll have to make it back to the upper levels to get out."

"Understood. Stand back, Doctor, Mr. Garrovick." Spock eyed the lock for a moment longer before pulling his phaser and simply melting it off the door.

Garrovick's eyes bugged.

"I had already ascertained there was no explosive device attached to it, Lieutenant," Spock's cool voice washed over him, drowning the sick feeling he was fighting in the pit of his stomach. "All other mechanisms in this facility are considerably archaic in their construction, if effective enough. Now."

McCoy swallowed hard and crowded in close as Spock hauled the door open, staying enough behind it to protect himself and the other two from flying projectiles.

Nothing happened; there was dead silence from within the completely dark room.

Their CMO couldn't take it any more. "Jim?" the doctor called anxiously, and snatched the nearest lantern from the wall, darting inside before either of them could react. "Jim? Are you in there?"

Garrovick maintained his grip on the phaser, following behind Spock as the Vulcan took the other lantern and entered, more cautiously. The glowing illumination banished the total darkness, sending shadows scuttling back into their corners and turning the bleakness of a prison cell into a more welcoming sight.

But the relief was short-lived. McCoy stood motionless just inside the door, looking across the room with an expression that was equal parts relieved, horrified, and confused.

"Doctor, what –" Spock's voice halted abruptly, and Garrovick finally shouldered enough into the cell to see.

James Kirk was alive, and awake, seated on a thin mattress with his knees drawn up and arms wrapped tightly around them, and appeared to be relatively unharmed at least in visible appearance; no doubt due to the fact that these were Orions and their second plan, after trying to wrest Starfleet secrets from him, would be to move him through their slave trade – no one wanted to destroy that classically handsome face. It was twisted, sick, carnally barbaric in thought…but true. The captain was far too thin, clothing hanging loosely on what had been a firmly-muscled figure, but otherwise appeared to only have minor scrapes and bruises.

But his _eyes_…Garrovick couldn't believe the eyes. Staring vacantly at the wall – not at them, not even in their direction – and utterly empty, barely blinking and void of all color and life.

"Doctor," Spock finally whispered, when the captain had made no motion to acknowledge their existence.

"Wait a second, Spock…" the physician mused, eyebrows screwed up in puzzled thought as his tricorder whirred. "Somethin's awfully fishy here…just wait a minute." Blue eyes darted over to the apparently oblivious figure, and then back toward the Vulcan. "Look," McCoy said in a low voice.

Taking the empty hypospray in hand, the doctor hurled it at the stone wall next to Kirk.

The man didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't look at the wall or even turn his head toward the clatter. Didn't react in any way.

Garrovick blinked, puzzled, but saw Spock's head whirl toward the physician, clear question in his expression.

McCoy's eyes flashed cold blue fire. "Look," he snarled, shoving the tricorder readings at the Vulcan. "Neural sense inhibitors. They're attached just behind the ears directly into the epidermis, and they block neural inputs to parts of the brain. Only patented to be used with violent patients in mental hospitals, to keep them docile if need be; you know like when you're trainin' a horse, a cloth over its eyes will keep it from rearing and bucking…same principle here, but they're illegal on a lot of planets because they're regarded as inhumane." The doctor's face was deathly white. "They…oh Spock, he's literally been blind and deaf from those things," he whispered, eyes closing in anguish. "Just sittin' here alone, for _five weeks_!"

Garrovick was really, _really_ glad he wasn't on the receiving end of the roiling fury that darkened Spock's face for the split-second before the mask dropped back into place; it was the stuff nightmares were made of.

"He can't see or hear us," McCoy said softly, eyes glistening. "Probably hasn't seen or heard anything for weeks – and most likely can't speak either, judging from where the brain signals are dampened in this scan…"

"Wouldn't…wouldn't a man go insane like that, deprived of sight and sound and speech for that long?" Garrovick found himself asking, coughing the words out around the sharp-cornered object in his throat.

Spock's head snapped over his direction so quickly that he heard a vertebra crack. "The captain is a stronger man that you might think, Lieutenant," the Vulcan answered crisply.

"Enough," McCoy snapped, slinging the tricorder back over his shoulder. "We need to get him out of here without freaking him out too much."

"I believe I will be of the most assistance, since the Captain cannot hear or see us –"

"Don't you even think about touchin' his mind, Spock!" the physician exclaimed. "Those neural sense inhibitors are far too dangerous; you could seriously brain-damage one or both of you if you tried it. No telepathy until I can get those things out of his head, do you understand me?"

Spock nodded reluctantly, one fist clenching and unclenching at his side, as if it was looking for a throat to crush and staying in practice just in case.

"Come on," McCoy said softly, beginning to walk toward the motionless figure on the thin pallet. "Let's get him out of here."

Garrovick got the distinct impression from a Vulcan glare that he had better mind his own business and watch the door instead of his incapacitated captain, and had the sense to do so.

As a result, he was the only one that didn't get the receiving end of a still very effective right hook or kick to sensitive portions of one's anatomy, when the two officers startled the blind and deaf captain.

Had the situation not been so horrible, Garrovick would have laughed aloud, because even without two of his senses Captain James Tiberius Kirk was seizing any opportunity he could to break out of his prison – what he expected to do without sight or sound was anyone's guess, but by heaven he was certainly trying.

McCoy's feeble wheeze and muttered curse as he hit the wall was buried under the rasping breathing of the injured captain, who was now grappling furiously with his Vulcan First.

"Jim, for the love of Pete," the physician gasped, clutching his sore stomach as he rolled to his feet.

The captain's vacant eyes were wild, the light of pure terror barely hidden in their empty depths, and his movements uncoordinated compared to his normal fluid grace of fighting style. Spock attempted to gently restrain the man but was promptly thrown for his efforts, not having anticipated the dirty fighting techniques a desperate human would use.

Kirk rolled with the kick and came up in a defensive crouch, arms up to protect his face, breathing in shuddering rasps and nervously moving his head from side to side, as if in a frantic attempt to sense something – _anything_, most likely. Though unbroken, he was obviously close to terrified at fighting enemies he could neither see or hear.

Garrovick thought that perhaps this wasn't the first time in five weeks the captain had had to defend himself against someone in this cell, and promptly wished he _hadn't_ thought of it.

"Spock, you're gonna have to do something," McCoy managed, scrambling to his feet.

"I could stun him, sir," Garrovick offered softly.

The physician shook his head. "No; a stun force affects the nervous system as well; we don't know what those inhibitors will do to his brain if you try it."

Spock stood, watching in silence as the captain shifted uneasily, worrying at his lower lip in a familiar gesture even as his arms shook from the effort of remaining in a self-defensive position. Then the Vulcan moved slowly over to the crouched figure, and waved a cupped hand in front of the captain's face.

Feeling the movement of air, Kirk immediately lunged forward, vacant eyes unknowingly looking straight at his rescuer, and promptly was caught by Vulcan strength. Spock had each wrist in a firm hand before the human could even react.

"Wait, Doctor," was the gentle request, and McCoy paused in the act of raising a sedative-loaded hypospray. "He is afraid; sedating him in that condition will not help his state of mind."

Kirk struggled frantically against the grip that held his wrists, hazel eyes empty of all but sheer terror now.

"You're gonna need to do somethin' quick then, Spock, because we need to get his heart rate down _now_."

"Understood."

"No melding, remember!" the doctor exclaimed irritably, as Spock slowly shifted his grip on the struggling man's wrists.

"I have no intention of doing so, Doctor."

Garrovick watched, heart aching for the gallantly-fighting man across the room, and wondering if he should look away to preserve the captain's dignity – but what shame was there in fighting as Kirk was? He knew _he'd_ have been a whimpering mess long before now were he in that position.

He watched.

Kirk was shaking now with the exertion, his struggles weakening as his depleted strength slowly dissipated. Spock did not attempt to communicate when such attempts would be obviously unsuccessful, nor did he waste time in wishing he could simply enter the man's mind and put his thoughts to rest.

Instead, he simply raised the captain's hands and placed them gently against the sides of his own head – on his gracefully pointed ears.

Kirk immediately stilled, vacant eyes widening.

Spock slowly let go of the human's wrists, lowering his hands to still motionless at his sides, but the cold fingers on his ears stayed for a few tense seconds. The captain's lips parted slightly, though no sound was forthcoming, and then one hand lifted shakily from its resting-place to brush with clumsy gentleness over the immaculate hair. Spock remained motionless during the blind exploration. Kirk's breathing quickened, and his hand slid rapidly down to where the Starfleet Science insignia rested on the blue tunic. One finger slowly traced the intricate circles and lines that comprised the emblem, and then both hands moved quickly further down to the double rows of braid on the Commander's sleeves.

Then a soft, broken sound escaped from useless vocal chords, and Kirk's head dropped limply forward, coming to rest against the thin shoulder as his clenched hands began to tremble against the Vulcan's chest with the receding adrenaline drain. Finally released from their stationary position by this unspoken consent, Spock's hands rose in silent support around the injured man.

McCoy had crept up behind them, and now laid a cautious hand on the back of the captain's neck, carefully avoiding the small implants and instead gently pressing on the pressure points at the base of the skull in a familiar gesture he often used in an attempt to alleviate the captain's infrequent migraines.

"It's okay, Jim," the physician murmured, even though the words were not going to be heard; Garrovick thought perhaps McCoy were trying more to reassure himself and Spock than the captain. "It's gonna be all right now…you're just fine…"

Kirk had stiffened momentarily at the new contact, but then almost immediately relaxed, now clearly recognizing the touch. Finally releasing the tension evident in every taut line of his malnourished body, he was trembling now in earnest, moving his head uneasily as if still trying desperately to clear it or at least understand why he couldn't, but with no success. It was only another few seconds before the blank eyes suddenly fluttered closed and the captain slumped forward with a faint sigh.

In one smooth motion, the Vulcan had swung the unconscious man up into his arms (Garrovick had heard of Vulcan strength but never saw it in action before – the captain looked like he weighed no more than a child's rag doll to the First Officer) and looked at their CMO over the captain's limp head, his gaze burning with something fiercely akin to protectiveness.

McCoy smiled and cleared his throat, eyes suspiciously bright.

Garrovick finally turned away to blink his own vision clear, and silently left the room to prepare the way for beam-out.

He knew he wasn't meant to view something this personal, but it had been an amazing gift just the same.

* * *

(1) I like Garrovick, I won't pretend I don't. I think he had potential that never got realized in the episode, and I also think Kirk would have mentored him a bit after the events of _Obsession_. I think the character that is James Kirk would have respected Garrovick for his actions on the planet, even if they were striking a commanding officer (albeit for a good cause) – because it's the type of thing the captain would have done himself. The other reason I like Garrovick is the way he took correction; if the episode had read like some poorly-written fanfic I've seen before, he'd have been curled up on his bed, emo and angsting, after being confined to quarters. Instead, he accepted it with a _what is, is; and how can I fix it_ attitude that I think is valuable in a subordinate. I think Spock respected him as well, from what I saw in the episode, and that brought up the idea of using him here as a POV. I hope I didn't make him an annoying character, but again this fic is a Kirk-Spock-centric story from indirect POVs and I hoped I could get away with it here.

(2) The disease of Rigellian fever was brought aboard just prior to the episode _Requiem for Methusaleh, _resulting in diverting the ship to get a supply of the cure (which I believe is spelled ryetalin, but I'm not staking my life on that. :P).

(3) Psychosomatic association. If you haven't guessed, this is indirect spoilers for _Conscience of the King_ and Tarsus IV. Remember at this time, no one except Spock and McCoy and Kevin Riley knew Kirk had been on Tarsus during the genocide, which was caused by a grain plague wiping out the planet's food resources.


	6. Chapter 6

**Title**: My Captain  
**Characters**: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, various including Uhura this chapter  
**Rating**: T  
**Word Count**: 10,187  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: Major spoilers and speculation for _For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky_. References episodes _Mirror, Mirror, The Apple, The Doomsday Machine_, and indirectly, _The Mark of Gideon_. Background-only pairings are **canon**; Scotty/Uhura forever, in my book, with all due respect (which frankly isn't much in that area at least) to J.J. Abrams. :P  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_ This is, obviously, the _one reason why he would do the same _chapter, and the concluding chapter for this story arc other than an explanatory epilogue.  
**A/N:** I have to say this is one of my favorite things I've written; it was thoroughly enjoyable. I find that Kirk is a character very often misrepresented and misunderstood by fans and fanfic writers alike. Too many people make him out to be more of a MarySue than Janice Rand, and some make him to be _far _too perfect for the character I see on the screen. However, far too many people in my opinion err on the other side of caution, making him a reckless, arrogant leader who doesn't care about regulation or anything but what he wants and an inappropriate womanizer atop all that. I firmly believe the truth is both somewhere and nowhere in the middle, and hope I did a bit to prove that in this fic.  
**A/N2**: I've had some thoughts about a sequel to this character study or even two, one Spock-centric and possibly one McCoy-centric. Interest, y/n?

* * *

"Unacceptable."

"Sir. The Fabrini archives are both complex and heavily encoded, obviously in a hitherto successful attempt to prevent outworlders from accessing the information contained within them. To access, decode, comprehend, and experimentally test each entry for acceptable results could take months, even were the entirety of our combined fifteen Science departments employed in the task, which is itself impossible. The chances of encountering the correct entry in the time period specified are astronomically against us."

The tone was clean and calm as an oceanside evening on Elthos, clear of any strain or inflection. For that very reason, it sent everyone on the Bridge wincing and shuffling nervously in their seats.

Captain James T. Kirk's head jerked up from the padd he was studying, eyes as hard as tri-forced duranium. "What part of _unacceptable_ do you not comprehend, Commander?" he inquired coolly.

"I comprehend it completely, Captain, and in fact agree with your assessment of the situation. Nevertheless, what you ask is impossible under the set of circumstances you have imposed."

Pavel Chekov, not really eavesdropping since their two COs were going at it in full hearing of anyone on the Bridge, winced; that had been the way wrong thing to say. You simply just don't tell Captain James I-don't-believe-in-no-win-situations Kirk that something can't be done; if you do, he'll find a way to prove you wrong, no matter what has to die in the attempt.

"Mr. Spock."

Metaphorical sparks flashed from the command chair, sending anyone within burning range ducking for cover. Chekov briefly considered coming to his mentor's defense but then glimpsed the look in their captain's eyes; he threw the unfortunate Vulcan under the bus, as the Americans would say, and began busily studying the utter absence of anything interesting on his scan-screens.

"Since when has evaluating the probability of success in following a direct order become part of the job description of a First Officer, Commander?" Kirk's tone was icy, the words slicing through the awkward silence that had fallen over the room.

Spock's expression had not changed in the last five minutes. "It has not, sir."

"Then you have taken the liberty of questioning orders entirely upon yourself, Mr. Spock?"

"I meant no disrespect, sir. Merely to point out that my departments cannot continue at this pace and still function as capably as they are expected to in their other duties."

But Spock was right about _that_, Chekov silently agreed, rubbing his eyes. They joked in the Science and Tactical departments about the Vulcan being a slave-driver, and he did indeed expect much of his people. But no one was more considerate of his subordinates, more patient, more forgiving, more protective, than their gentle First Officer – and as such, each of his people would gladly walk out the nearest airlock if the Vulcan wished it. Spock expected, even demanded, the highest possible results; but just now, they were all overtaxed from more than that quarter.

They all jumped as the padd was slammed down on the armrest of the command chair, when its occupant shot out of it and sent it spinning sickeningly with the force of the motion. The captain purposely remained on the raised platform instead of descending to eye level, hands fisted lightly on his hips, flashing eyes glaring with open hostility at the composed figure standing below.

"Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough the first time, Commander," he snapped, the staccato delivery accented by the tone that Chekov had heard make arrogant new recruits bawl like little children. "I don't _care_ what your departments supposedly can or can't do. I require _results_, not _excuses, _from my crew. I want that cure found, and I want it found _yesterday_, mister. Am. I. Understood?"

Spock nodded, to all appearances unruffled. Only Chekov, who had been closely tutored by the Vulcan, could see the signs of stress in the hands clenched behind the Vulcan's back. And he'd never heard so many _sir_s being flung about on the Bridge before in all his months aboard. "Quite clearly, Captain."

"Good." A false smile was conjured up from somewhere in the fragile command persona, and the young navigator shivered; it was far more frightening than an explosion would have been. "Then I will expect a more favorable report from you this evening. You have the conn."

"I shall bring it to our chess game at 1800 hours, sir." The Vulcan's tone had softened, obviously in an effort to mend the fractured tension in the atmosphere.

The captain was already in the turbolift. Turning, he paused before grasping the directional handle, his expression unchanged from its frozen hostility. "If you do not have better news for me than you just did, Commander," he said coldly, "then don't bother coming by."

Spock's eyes closed for a moment, only a moment – but long enough that Chekov knew it hadn't been to just blink. "Aye, sir," the Vulcan replied softly as the door closed on the captain's curt nod.

Sulu's worried glance slid over to him, a clear _haven't seen a snit like that in a long time, have you?_ hanging unspoken in the air. Chekov shook his head, sighing in sympathy for the poor First Officer, as various murmurs and whispers filled the silence following the captain's exit.

"Gentlemen, I believe you all have duties to perform other than speaking of your commanding officers while they are otherwise engaged?" Spock's unruffled voice showered calm over the room, dispelling the tension to some extent under its sheer tranquility. By rights, he could have chastised them for their covert criticism, as he could also have defended or excused Kirk's actions – but in true characterization of his unfailing sense of justice, he did neither.

"But sir – "

"That will do, Lieutenant," was the stern reply; but the tone was gentle, for Uhura's indignation on Spock's behalf was noticeable to everyone. "As you were."

"He should not let zhe Keptin speak to him like that," Chekov muttered to his seat-mate under his breath, fingers popping over the controls as the ship continued on its destination. "It is not right, not professional, in front of junior officers. If he ees so afraid of zhe Keptin's temper that he permits him to say such things, then –"

Sulu flicked a frantic glance over his shoulder, just as he felt a looming presence behind him.

Ohhhh, boy.

"Mr. Chekov, a word?"

Right, Vulcan hearing.

"Sir?" Perhaps feigned innocence would be the best recourse.

Spock's expression did not change. He was, in a word, busted. "In the turbolift, if you please, Mr. Chekov. Assume the conn for now, Mr. Sulu; I shall not be long."

Sulu shot him a sympathetic look as he turned the piloting station over to his replacement and moved up to the command chair. Nervously running a hand through his hair, the young Russian glumly followed Spock to the lift and stepped inside.

When the door had closed, Spock prevented it from moving. The absence of a private room in which to confer at times was problematic for the Bridge crew; there was much talk in the upper eschelons about revamping the _Enterprise_'s design structure to allow a briefing room or at least a small ready room for the captain's use, so that he would not have to completely leave the Bridge to take private transmissions or speak to his upper ranks without the junior officers being able to hear.

That would probably help with the problems such as the one which had just occurred on the Bridge.

"I vas out of line, Mr. Spock. I apologize," he spoke directly and without waiting for Spock's censure; he knew well that the Vulcan appreciated discipline and promptness, and abhorred the human tendency to soften or shift blame.

"You were," Spock agreed sternly. "I will not tolerate public denigration of a superior, Mr. Chekov, especially that of the Captain."

"Aye, sir."

"However, Ensign," and the Vulcan's tone lightened, "your sentiments were understandable, if inexcusable in their ability to be heard by your crewmates. Ensure that such does not occur again, and we will consider the matter forgotten."

"It vill not happen again, sir," he vowed emphatically, relieved beyond words that Spock wasn't going to thoroughly take him to task over it – he had been known to do so on occasion, as more than one smart-mouthed cadet had found the hard way.

Spock nodded, almost absently. The Vulcan's eyes were shuttered, betraying nothing that would give any indication even to close observers what he was thinking. And that in itself was unusual.

Frowning, he gathered up his courage and stepped across the lift, closer to his superior. "Mr. Spock…vhat exactly is wrong with the Keptin?"

Spock's eyes narrowed, slid his direction without his head moving to acknowledge. "What gives you the idea that something is amiss, Ensign? The Captain has been under stress before. He demands, and indeed has the right to demand, the results he needs from his subordinates."

"Vell yes, but…forgive me, sir, but you do not usually…" _sit back and take it without defending yourself or try to take the brunt of it upon yourself_, "…exert such unending patience with him, or divert his attention from zhe rest of us when we attract it," he attempted to finish in logical, clinical terms, and only succeeded he thought in sounding like an idiot.

The lines of tension around the Vulcan's eyes relaxed suddenly, and he was glad to see the small gesture. "Ensign, there is more involved in this matter than has been made visible or public knowledge to anyone but a select few in the chain of command," was the explanation, delivered with a kind but this-is-classified-so-do-not-ask edge. "It is far more personal, and the ramifications therefore will be far more painful, than you know. Please endeavor to remember that, when in contact with Captain Kirk, until the problem is resolved."

Chekov bit his lip, for he was more worried about how tired his mentor looked, and how tolerantly he had let the captain blow up in his face not once, but at least seven times in the last four days. Something big had to be behind it, because Spock didn't look angry or even annoyed (even for him), just…concerned. And even a Vulcan wouldn't tolerate the kind of things he'd been given from the captain over the last week, unless there was something else involved. Even Spock's patience wasn't endless, Chekov knew _that_ from unfortunate experience.

"Understood," he said finally, and received a grateful nod. "Sir," he suddenly added on impulse, as they prepared to re-enter the Bridge. "Ees there anything I can do, to facilitate what it is you are trying to accomplish?"

For the first time in his life, he saw the Vulcan look torn, uncertain, for a fractional moment only. Then the expression faded, schooled back behind the mask of professionalism. "In actuality, Ensign…the trajectory calculations and mapping from our charting of the Duransa nebula and its accompanying solar system. I have not had opportunity to calculate, condense, and finalize them for report status. It is highly irregular, but not unacceptable, for that responsibility to be given to one's subordinate for primary correlation…"

He could have laughed at the simplicity of the request, and at Spock's obvious reluctance to foist his work off on someone else – but that very willingness, however reluctant it was, was indication enough of how high the stakes were in this game they were playing. Something enormous was on the line, if their resident work-a-holic was willing to give some of his tasks to subordinates.

"Commander, I vill be happy to help," was all he said, wisely making no further comment.

"I am…grateful, Ensign."

-000-

The crew of the starship _Enterprise_ were a family, one reason why they worked so well together – and it didn't take much for the news to spread that something, some all-important stakes, were on the line and riding on whatever they had taken from the Fabrini asteroid before continuing on their mission. (1) Even if whatever-it-was was classified, no one got onto the _Enterprise_ if he were a dolt, and it required no intelligence to observe the mounting tension aboard in the upper command structure and make the necessary correlations.

Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu was the central processing house for the _Enterprise_ grapevine; not out of a love for gossip, but from intense loyalty to Kirk himself. The young helmsman had a head of common sense and a heartfelt desire to quash any harmful rumors that could be started regarding Kirk or anyone under his command; as such he had formed an unofficial chain of ship's gossip, fielding inquiries and in no uncertain terms shutting down matters that were none of ship's business (the fact that his fencing partners seemed to conveniently get sliced up a bit if they were part of the latter did not escape anyone's notice but the Captain's).

So it was to Sulu that the young Russian turned. His friend would know what was going on, or at least what _wasn't_ going on, and would be able to set his mind at ease.

The uncomfortable, knowing look in the young pilot's eyes when he mentioned the matter told him more than he had expected to discover.

"Yes, I know, Pavel," Sulu sighed, toying idly with the blinking controls at his console. They were on the Bridge, Spock buried in the Medical labs and Kirk having stormed off for a tense coffee break fifteen minutes before. They were safe for the moment. "And I don't think the Captain's been sleeping much either; rumor has it that he's been heard pacing in his room or working at all hours of the night."

Chekov nodded, for it matched what Spock's uneasy Experimental Science lieutenants had been saying for almost two weeks now.

"And Spock hasn't slept in over nine days, according to Nurse Chapel's observation of his room's bio-monitor," Sulu added, sighing. "I just wish someone would tell us what's really going on. I haven't seen the two of them like this since…that incident with the Romulan Commander and that cloaking device. Talk about tension."

"It must be something to do with Medical, as that is where zhe Commander has spent every moment he is not on duty," Chekov mused, brows drawn together in thought.

"Chapel agrees with you, for what it's worth," Sulu muttered, tapping a button to alter their course in avoidance of a large asteroid. "And she knows more than she's telling, too. Just said we all need to be more patient than usual with the Captain and Dr. McCoy."

The lift doors opened, familiar voices carrying before the occupants exited, and the two shared a look of silent dismay. "Speak of the devils," Sulu muttered, studiously double-checking their course chart so as to avoid incurring the wrath of their captain for a potential mistake.

"Report," Kirk snapped, almost mechanically, thumping down into his seat like a man displeased with life itself.

"All systems normal, Captain."

"No anomalies to report, sir," Chekov added, glancing back at Spock's scanner as the Vulcan silently took his station.

"Very good, gentlemen. Doctor, how much longer is this going to take?"

Nobody needed to turn around to hear the scowl in McCoy's voice, but after sneaking a look anyway Chekov could also see the man looked as drained as Spock did, maybe more so. "If you'd let me give you the blasted reports two days ago like I was supposed to, then you wouldn't have to hear them now. And _no_, I can't just send 'em to you; it has to be on record that the Chief Medical Officer spoke directly to the Captain about anything regarding the working safety of this ship and her crew. You know that as well as I do."

"Then _get on with it_, Doctor," Kirk answered through clenched teeth.

Sulu shot him an _I-told-you-so look_, apprehensively casting glances over his shoulder as the doctor launched into a detailed and extremely uninteresting report on crew evaluations regarding the upcoming personnel shift at Starbase Fourteen-Alpha.

McCoy stood calmly before the irritated captain, bouncing slightly on his feet as he drawled onward through the belated reports, tacking on commentary when appropriate and not really paying attention to anyone else.

Chekov yawned, but then looked up when the physician's voice trailed off, hesitating for only a second before continuing through the list.

Sulu's eyes shifted instantly over to Spock, and the young Russian followed his gaze; the Vulcan had turned in his chair, and was watching the doctor, eyes narrowed.

As the Americans would say, _Bingo_.

Kirk was rubbing absently with one thumb at the space directly between his eyes, a familiar gesture that indicated a headache if not pounding on his skull, at least looking for the sledgehammer, when the doctor faltered again, and shook his head.

"Doctor –"

"I'm just tired, Mr. Spock," shot the reply, fairly snapped into the air like the cracking of a whip – far too defensively, in Chekov's opinion, and from Sulu's calculating look at the doctor and then at the increasingly perturbed countenance of their captain he knew he was on the right track.

"Doctor, I –"

"Leave him alone, Spock," Kirk growled, clearly exasperated, "or he'll never finish these reports. I understand your misgivings regarding the transfer, Doctor, but regulation does state that crew rotation is mandatory for at least twenty men. I am relying on you to choose those twenty."

The physician's reply was lost in the hum of instruments around them, but Chekov kept one eye on the command center, for what reason he really was not sure. By this time in the reports, the captain was pacing in an agitated path around the Bridge, occasionally nodding or dictating a sentence for notes as he strayed along the upper decks in time with McCoy's voice.

They young navigator was just beginning to wonder if he hadn't imagined half the things he thought he'd seen, when the padd the doctor was holding slipped from his hands with a clatter. The doctor broke off mid-sentence, swayed unsteadily on his feet with a murmured "Jim…"

Nobody had ever seen Spock move so fast as he did when the physician's knees then refused to hold him, sending the human mercilessly toward the deck. The Vulcan literally _leapt_ the dividing rail and made a dive for the falling man, only just in time to prevent the doctor from slicing his head open on the steps to the command chair.

Their captain, who had been prowling like a caged tiger, turned a deathly shade of white as he tripped down the two steps to the lower deck. He skidded to a halt beside the crouched form of his First, who was supporting the doctor's head in one strong, slender hand and feeling his pulse with the other.

"Oh, Bones," the captain whispered, placing gentle fingers on the unconscious man's head, and the unadulterated grief in the tone melted away any irritation anyone in the room had toward the man; there was nothing evident here but utter, barely-controlled heartbreak.

"It is a natural effect, Captain," Spock's voice was low, barely over a murmur, but still audible to the closest of crewmembers at least. "As a result of the progression, blood pressure is subject to frequent and drastic highs and lows. A human's body is not capable of regulating such at so short notice. He is merely unconscious."

The captain looked stricken. Even if they hadn't known what was going on before, what they could only surmise now made Chekov feel sick deep inside.

Kirk's hand slowly moved from the doctor's hair up to his own head, where he pinched the bridge of his nose fiercely. "Spock," he whispered, clenching his eyes shut, "I really need you to find that cure. Pull every man you need to…from anywhere in the ship…we'll sit dead in space if we have to, but you have my authority to draft them if they can do _anything_. But _find_ it. _Please_, Spock."

The despairing, helpless plea would have melted a far sterner heart than a Vulcan one, in Chekov's opinion, and now he knew why Spock had never retaliated even in look from the onslaught of the human's attacks the past two weeks.

"I _will_ find it, Captain," the Vulcan promised solemnly, and the pain in his eyes backed it up a hundredfold as he shifted the physician to a more comfortable position on the captain's arm. "But you, and the Doctor, must allow me and my people the time to do so. You must…hold on."

The captain looked down, eyelashes shivering slightly against tightly closed eyes. "I'm – I'm sorry," he whispered at last, so softly even the two at the helm three feet away could barely hear.

Spock rose, one hand gentle on the human's shoulder and the other curtly signaling Uhura to call for a medical team. "I know."

-ooo-

Chekov was on the Bridge when Spock's call came through nearly six days later, accompanied by what sounded like a room full of anarchy.

"Kirk here," the captain had sighed, boredly signing a report from Environmental Control.

_"Spock here, Captain,"_ the Vulcan had droned, an undercurrent of tolerant fatigue in his voice.

"Yes, what is it, Mr. Spock." The stylus whipped over the next two reports in a perfunctory gesture.

_"Captain, we – Nurse, if you please! That unbridled pandemonium is hardly conducive to efficient communication. Sir, we have discovered what we believe to be the Fabrini cure for xenopolycythemia."_

The stylus went rolling on the deck, sending the puzzled yeoman scrambling after it.

Spock's voice changed from tense to almost un-Vulcanly satisfied. _"All experiments on test subjects result positive. We are ready to proceed on your and Dr. McCoy's command, sir. Shall I summon him, or would you prefer to escort him to Science Lab Two for preliminary explanations?"_

Kirk's whoop of delight scared the devil out of everyone. Chekov and Sulu scrambled to keep them from piloting straight into a star. The rest of the clueless crew gaped openly at their captain, who fairly danced into the turbolift, tossing command at whoever wanted to sit in his precious chair.

Once the ship was back on course, Chekov raised wide eyes to his seat-mate.

Sulu nodded, grinning his pleasure. "Hopefully that fixes things for a while. But _xenopolycythemia_," he mused, the relief in his expression tensing slightly. "If McCoy really has that…"

"Then it is of no wonder why zhe Keptin has not been himself," the young navigator nodded sagely.

"Mmhm." The pilot's eyes softened as he rose to take the command seat, shooting an overeager Lieutenant from Engineering a pointed look as if to say _don't even think about it, squirt_. "Poor guy, that's a big load to carry for all these weeks. I think he's entitled to a little…creative stress management, don't you?"

Uhura's intra-ship comm whistled for attention, and she opened the channel, smiling to herself. "Bridge."

_"Spock here, Lieutenant. Is Mr. Chekov still on duty?"_

"Here, sir," he called cheerfully into the comm.

A cheer suddenly erupted in the bedlamic background of the channel, and nobody could tell if Spock really sighed into the comm or if it was just another noise in the melee. _"Mr. Chekov, I would appreciate your assistance in a matter," _the Vulcan stated.

"Aye, sir?"

_"Spock!"_ a familiar voice thundered joyously from further away, and the Bridge crew smiled as one; the difference between the captain's previous mood and this was greater than that of night and day. _"You're amazing, have I ever told you that?"_

_"Quite so, and you have,"_ was the dry reply, and a ripple of snickers went around the room. _"A moment, Captain. Mr. Chekov, please inform my Science and Metaphysics departments that all laboratories are to be shut down and all personnel relieved of duty for the period of at least two duty shifts. You may need to attend to Laboratory Eleven in person, as I fear by now the team may have fallen asleep, after a fourth night in which they took no rest period."_

Chekov grinned. "Immediately, sir."

_"Lieutenant Uhura, if you would convey my thanks to Mr. Scott for the loan of his thirty-five personnel, and reiterate the terms of my agreement with him, effective upon our leave at Starbase Fourteen-Alpha."_

"Aye, sir." And wouldn't they all like to know what those terms had been!

_"Please inform Mr. Sulu that he will have command of the Bridge until the end of alpha shift, as I must supervise the process here and I highly doubt the captain will remember he was on duty."_

Sulu laughed and punched the arm-rest inter-comm in response. "Acknowledged, Commander. And sir?" he added as Spock obviously was about to terminate the connection.

_"Yes, Mr. Sulu."_

For a hesitant moment, the young pilot debated whether or not to say it, but at the wide grin lurking on Chekov's face he met the look with a smirk of his own. It wasn't like Spock could do anything about it at the moment, anyway.

"Sir – the captain's right, you know. You _are_ amazing."

Silence, other than the background pandemonium. Chekov could practically _hear_ the eyebrows defying about half-a-dozen laws of gravity.

Whatever they'd been expecting, it was definitely not a warm _"…I believe the appropriate expression is, _the feeling is mutual_, gentlemen."_

* * *

Captain James T. Kirk, when he had been placed on another of McCoy's infamous but well-intended diets, was unbearably _cranky_.

Everyone knew it, or at least had been surreptitiously warned about it, via the chain of gossip that originated in MedBay and was confirmed by Lieutenant Sulu and the Bridge crew. The majority of the crew thought it was hilarious; especially since the captain really was not an unhealthy eater as a rule and only rarely truly deserved the diet when it was imposed just because their CMO was capable of doing so. The rest thought it a bit ridiculous that a grown man could pitch as big a tantrum as James T. Kirk could, but for the most part they overlooked the fault for what it was – a fault; for didn't they all have several, just different ones?

The chain of events was simple. McCoy went on one of his organic-and-healthy rampages every so often, usually after Kirk had thoroughly frightened him by getting injured on an away mission. The captain was hauled in for a medical examination, of the most painful and exacting kind and at the worst possible time. Any aberrance in Kirk's dietary routine was scrutinized, and his meal card changed to prevent him from accessing any complex carbohydrates. He then stormed about the ship for four or five days, growling at everyone who even looked sideways at him and throwing himself into such rigorous exercise routines that his subordinates began to worry for his health. Spock finally grew weary of bearing the brunt of human crankiness and went to Medical usually halfway through the sixth day. McCoy somehow had a change of mind and released the captain's meal card. The sun came out with James T. Kirk's smile and his morning waffles, and all was well again.

If Sickbay somehow sported shiny new equipment after the each batch of Spock's 'Fleet requisitions, no one dared correlate it with any other event aboard.

Just now, it was the fourth day of one such diet. By all rights, the captain should be somewhere between snarling at anything that stepped within three feet of his personal space bubble and quite capably hacking the beverage replicator in his quarters in an attempt to coax hot chocolate out of it.

Instead, he was simply sitting in his chair, head resting listlessly on one hand while his other scrawled his signature across a never-ending stack of reports and requisition forms.

The Bridge crew had been eyeing each other incredulously for the last five hours, just braced for the captain to lower the boom on the first unsuspecting ensign that caused his console to emit an angry beep. But the entirety of this shift and the one before it had passed quietly – too quietly, but still quietly – and without any incident worth noting whatsoever.

Perhaps the captain's stint in the mirror universe they'd encountered last week had given him a new appreciation for his physique and the subsequent eating habits, Uhura mused fondly, remembering their extremely revealing (Scotty had told her hers was 'verrrrry sexy,' but that _really_ hadn't been an encouragement at the time) uniforms with a mixture of admiration and horror. Lucky for McCoy and the rest of them, if so, she thought with a smile as the captain waved his yeoman away finally, having finished the third report set of the hour.

Her amusement turned to concern when the captain leaned forward, silently putting his face in his hands and massaging the skin around his eyes and temples. No doubt he thought he was unnoticed by his quiet command crew.

Uhura tapped a finger softly on her console for a few steady moments, until Vulcan hearing registered the odd sound and dark eyes glanced her way. She tilted her head backward to indicate their leader, who was currently pinching the bridge of his nose, and then turned her attention back to her work, knowing her job was done.

"Captain."

Kirk started, and half the sleepy crew jumped, as the cool voice shattered the silence. The command chair swiveled toward the science station as the Vulcan stepped toward the center of the Bridge. All traces of discomfort carefully gone, Kirk smiled in his normal fashion at his First. "Yes, Mr. Spock."

"I have completed my report on the curious amalgamation of composite matter in the rock formations of Gamma Trianguli 6, sir, and attached it to my report on the mission there for Starfleet Command (2). Would you prefer I send it to your terminal rather than…I believe the phrase is, _boring you with the details_, at this time?"

"Yes, do that if you will, Mr. Spock." One hand scrubbed wearily at hazel eyes. "I'll go over it and send it on with mine in tomorrow's packet."

"Aye, sir." Spock pressed the appropriate buttons on the console and sent the report to Kirk's quarters. He then turned his attention back to the human, who was slumped listless in the command chair, staring at the starry viewscreen. "Would you join me for lunch, Captain?" he then asked, as it was nearing time for the mid-day break.

Kirk shook his head. "I'm really not hungry, Mr. Spock; you go ahead."

Uhura looked perplexedly at an alarmed Sulu and Chekov across the room, for they might as well have blared a red alert klaxon to inform the crew something was wrong, for all the subtlety that was taking place here.

Spock, bless his heart, looked to her like he was simply mystified, and as a result temporarily speechless, for his offers to share meals with his captain were rare and Kirk had always been delighted to accept them.

"Sir," the Vulcan began hesitantly, as the captain returned his attention to a fuel consumption report from a slightly-nervous yeoman. "Dr. McCoy would not be pleased to hear of your skipping meals –"

"I'm sure he'll live, Commander." Kirk's tone was light, but the warning flash in his eyes as he glanced up, handing the padd back to the yeoman, was definitely not. "It isn't about the stupid salads either, Spock," he added in an undertone that only Uhura could hear because of her proximity to the command chair. "I'm really just not hungry. I…have a slight headache."

"I see," was the quiet reply, but the tone indicated Spock certainly did _not_ see the logic in depriving one's self of sustenance. Besides, the day that James Kirk actually _admitted_ having a slight headache was usually the day he had an epic migraine. "Shall I bring you one of the good doctor's red pills upon my return, then?"

The light chuckle that emerged sounded vaguely forced. "No, but thanks."

Uhura's console beeped, the incoming transmission indicator glowing bright green. Much as she hated to interrupt whatever was transpiring between her two superiors, duty called.

"Captain, there's a transmission from Starfleet Command. Priority One, sir," she reported, turning in her chair to meet Kirk's look of frustration.

"What now?" he growled, sitting up straighter in the chair and turning a belligerent scowl toward the viewscreen, just for a moment, before he yanked his displeasure back under a façade of professionalism. "Never mind, Lieutenant, just put it on."

She did so, and regretted it when the pompous, unyielding tones of Admiral Komack filled the Bridge, a prerecorded transmission detailing their next assignment, which was to divert from their charted course toward a rendezvous with the _Constellation_ in system L370 (3), and to investigate the lack of contact from a freighter in their current system. The barge had been carrying a large shipment of medical supplies, for distribution among various starships and starbases, and had simply vanished. Pirates were the logical suspicion, but the possibility of some more refined intent, given that it was medical supplies, was not out of the question.

The fact that the admiral disliked Kirk was quite evident both in the tone and in the fact that he didn't even bother to transmit the message live, so as to avoid having to answer Kirk's questions or field well-founded indignation that they be diverted to chase after a medical ship when the crew was due for a quick rendezvous with the _Constellation_ and then shore leave on one of the planets in the L370 system.

The transmission shut off in the usual brusque fashion, leaving the captain glaring moodily at the viewscreen and the rest of the crew braced for the inevitable.

Then – "Lieutenant, send a message to the _Constellation_. Tell Matt we'll be a little late getting there," the captain finally sighed, slumping back in his chair. "Chekov, plot a course to the last known coordinates of the freighter; engage when ready, Mr. Sulu."

That was all; incredulous, the crew followed the orders and merely wondered at the enervation.

Four days, two unscheduled drops out of warp into ambush, one space battle with an alien pirate frigate, and a beam-down with pirate prisoners to their home world later, they had completed the mission. Unfortunately, the pirate frigate and its cargo had been destroyed during the battle; not due to the _Enterprise_'s firing upon them, but due to a flaw in the ship's warp core that destroyed the core when Engineering blew apart. As a result, 'Fleet Command was not happy about the fact that their medicinal supplies were now only so many molecules scattered across the quadrant.

And they didn't have any reservations about letting the captain know of their displeasure.

James Kirk looked exhausted, everyone aboard could see that. When he'd been beamed up from the planet with the Security squad Scott had violated protocol and comm-ed the Bridge to warn Spock and the command crew how poorly he looked. Unfortunately, Starfleet Command did not appear to care, as they were waiting impatiently on the comm-channel which Uhura was seriously contemplating pulling the plug on at the present moment.

The lift doors opened to admit the captain back to his domain, and he moved slowly down to the command chair as Spock rose gracefully as a cat to vacate it.

Uhura watched with a flicker of concern as Kirk seemed to shiver as he moved into place, more hunched than seated in the chair. His (admittedly handsome) face was flushed and drawn, eyes glinting with annoyed determination.

Spock's eyebrows told everyone that she wasn't the only one who noticed, but she wasn't given time to think about anything but the Admiralty, as they sent through another impatience-laden burst.

"Put them on, Lieutenant," Kirk murmured, straightening himself and looking forward without any attempt at levity.

"Aye, sir," she replied softly, and made the connection.

Admiral Komack's face filled the screen, and the captain stood at strict attention. "Kirk, your report is completely unsatisfactory," he stated with a frown of utter disapproval. "You know better than to destroy a pirate frigate!"

"Admiral, the _Enterprise_ fired _one_ torpedo into what was schematized to be their _navigational_ system; it was hardly our fault that it turned out to be their smuggled weapons system, upon which ancient explosives detonated and blew out their engineering section," the captain snapped back, with a tone of weariness.

"Do you have any idea how valuable those medical supplies were that you destroyed, Kirk?"

"Some idea, yes, considering a good portion of them were vaccines and drugs for the _Enterprise_," was the ironic response.

"Your flippancy is uncalled-for, Kirk," Komack snapped severely. "It will be at least a month before another supply ship can be re-routed to that sector. When we sent you after the _Nightingale_, we did not intend for you to destroy the cargo it contained, pirates or no pirates."

"Nor did we…intend to destroy it, Admiral," Kirk sighed, dragging a sleeve across his perspiring forehead.

It wasn't that hot on the bridge, and since when did talking down the admiralty make Captain James T. Kirk nervous?

Uhura shot the First Officer a worried look, and – even more alarmingly – it was returned.

"Well you've only yourselves to thank then for the fact that you'll be low on medical supplies for another four weeks in the middle of the most deserted sector in the galaxy," Komack growled, clearly angry but unable to truly place blame on anyone. "Do not come crying to Command if you find yourselves in need of aid before that time."

"I've no intention…of doing so, Admiral," was the quiet reply. "It was my decision to fire, though my intentions were not to destroy the ship; and therefore…the consequences for those actions will be mine as well."

"Proceed to the L370 system to rendezvous with Captain Decker and the _Constellation_, _Enterprise_. Komack out."

Uhura cut the connection with a muttered oath of gratitude, wishing the man could drop the grudge he'd held against the captain ever since the incidents with Vulcan and T'Pau last year.

Kirk himself, she saw as she looked back from her switchboard, had both arms wrapped around his torso in what seemed to her to be a peculiar gesture of self-protection. Body language was as much a part of linguistics as written or verbal speech, and the oddness of the stance drew her attention, as she'd never seen the captain be anything other than strictly professional and rigidly calm on duty.

Now, his face was paling rapidly from its former flush, and he more collapsed than sat back in his chair. He was, apparently unconsciously, running his left hand up and down his right arm, as if he were chilled even through the long-sleeved command tunic.

Her finger hovered over the Sickbay call-switch for the next hour, just in case.

-ooo-

The next day she was eating lunch with Montgomery Scott in the Mess when it happened.

They had been sitting at a small table against the wall near the meal selectors, chatting pleasantly (at least Scotty was rambling enthusiastically about something down in Engineering and she was content to let him do so) and watching the crew come and go during this least busy of lunch times.

"Aye, and so Mr. Spock just takes one look at the equations and says, all serious as you please, 'Mr. Scott. As a theoretical physicist, your calculations leave much to be desired.'" Scotty was recalling a story, doing a Spock-impression as only the good-natured Scot could, and waving his hands wildly to demonstrate, as the Vulcan approached the selectors with a reluctant-looking captain in tow.

"Dr. McCoy assures me he has removed all restrictions on your meal card, Captain," the Vulcan's voice clearly reached them from six feet away. "Therefore, it would be illogical for you to not be able to procure at least _something_ which appeals to your appetite at the present time."

Kirk looked slightly nauseated at the smell of Spock's eggplant pasta dish as the tray emerged from the selector.

"Somethin' wrong with the lad?" Scotty asked, adorably losing all interest in his sandwich at the sight of her worried expression.

"I'm not sure, Scotty," she replied softly, as the captain leaned shakily against the wall with one hand while waiting on his meal to appear.

Spock was still speaking of ship's status (it was time for quarterly crew evaluations, and everyone knew better than to disturb the command team during that week as they lived and breathed and ate nothing _but_ those evaluations until they were finished) when the selector chimed, cheerfully indicating the captain's sandwich and coffee were ready.

"…therefore I believe it would be most beneficial to transfer the Lieutenant to Xenosocietal Development rather than Xenosociology, for the simple reason that…Captain?"

Kirk's face had lost all color, his brow glistening with a sheen of perspiration as he raised his head. "…Spock," he murmured, swallowing hard, eyelids fluttering. "I…think I'd…better…" The captain raised a shaking hand to his eyes and pitched forward without another sound.

Their table was closest to the selector, and so she and Scott barely had time to register the incoming tray that Spock all but flung onto the cleared surface before it had hit, rattling dishes and flatware in a tinny accompaniment for the captain folding into his First Officer's arms.

The mess subsided into stunned silence before an alarmed hubbub broke out around them. Scott disappeared instantly into the melee, no doubt heading for the nearest comm-unit to alert Sickbay. Uhura snagged a worried Sulu from his nearby table and set him to dispelling the chaos and keeping the crowd back from where Spock was supporting the captain's not-quite-dead weight.

"Mr. Spock," she called quietly over the buzz of confusion, indicating Scott's and her vacated table.

The Vulcan's eyes flickered in gratitude toward her over Kirk's head, and between the First Officer and Sulu's assistance they moved the swaying man to the closest chair.

"All right, you lot," Scott's powerful voice boomed over the mild pandemonium, and the whole room froze to listen. "Either ye calm doon and eat your lunches without gawking, or ye ship out, back to your stations."

Wide eyes stared all across the room.

"And be quick about it!"

The room for the most part wisely emptied in moments.

"Captain." Spock's calm voice smoothed over the mild panic attack taking place at the small table. "Captain, can you hear me?"

From her place kneeling before the dazed man, Uhura saw Kirk's eyes flicker in recognition. "Spock?" he asked faintly, looking up in confusion. "What…what on earth happened? I just got horribly dizzy for a minute there..."

The man didn't flinch when she laid a gentle hand on his brow, brushing the rebellious lock of hair back from it, then ghosted the back of her fingers against his flushed cheek. She drew back in alarm, looking up at the tense features of Scott and Sulu. Spock's attention was, not surprisingly, focused upon keeping the trembling captain from falling out of his chair.

"He's burning up," she said bluntly.

"No, I'm freezing," Kirk corrected her crossly, and she under other circumstances would have laughed at his disgruntled petulance. "Stupid uniforms don't hold in body heat; no wonder you wear double layers, Spock." A frown twisted the captain's lips. "I'm going to my cabin for a sweater. Sweaters are good," he muttered in absent addendum, and started to stand, much to their combined alarm.

"Captain, you are not going anywhere but to Sickbay," Spock ordered severely, a pinched edge audible in the tone as he placed both powerful hands on the human's shoulders to hold him in place.

"_After_ I get my sweater," the man insisted, obviously only half-aware of his surroundings, and squirmed out from under the Vulcan's grip. He tottered unsteadily to his feet, and swayed once.

Vulcan reflexes ensured Spock was the one to catch him when he fell again, and this time the Vulcan only scooped him up like a child and sent Sulu sprinting for the comm to alert Sickbay that the First was on his way, for McCoy to meet him there.

-ooo-

Before the day was out, word had spread like a bushfire: the captain was fighting for his life in Sickbay.

Vegan choriomeningitis. Deadly within twenty-four hours of the standard symptoms' appearance, if not treated. (4)

There was a vaccine, of course, for the prevention of the rare disease, as well as a targeted xenoantimicrobial for its treatment, and each starship carried at least one dose of every vaccine, antibiotic, and antivenin known to medical science; because as long as one was to be found more could be replicated. The problem was that the _Enterprise_'s medical stores had recently been put through inventory and old, inert medications disposed of.

Their medical replenishment, including that particular antimicrobial, had blown up with the _Nightingale_'s cargo.

"Yes, I know the basic ingredients, but to synthesize, test, and formulate a generic substitute?" McCoy had cried helplessly when confronted with the knowledge. "D'you know how difficult that would be? It'd take far more time than we've got! And there's no guarantee that it'd work like the actual serum, even if we had enough time to make it!"

Uhura had watched Mr. Spock turn a peculiar shade of pale grey, looking for all the world as if he was going to be sick, and then stride from the room without another word.

Ten minutes later, McCoy cast her a dubious look as the soothing hum of the warp engines changed perceptibly to a strained, muted wail, and one call to the Bridge confirmed that they were running scared for the nearest Starbase, at warp seven-point-three and climbing.

"If he doesn't tear the ship apart before we get there, we might make it in time," McCoy muttered, his blue eyes pinched and drawn with helplessness. "I can keep Jim going with antibiotics and pain relievers for maybe a little over forty-eight hours…but it'll be cutting it awful close. _Too_ awful close," he whispered, and left the room abruptly, eyes clenched shut.

She wasn't on duty any more, and decided to go keep Scotty company in the Engineering section; as long as she didn't get in his way, he likely was going to need a buffer between himself and his poor subordinates over the way his precious engines were going to be treated.

-ooo-

Vegan choriomeningitis was a thankfully rare affliction in this day, characterized by high fevers and delirium in addition to intense muscle cramps and pain in the extremities. Other side effects could include crippling headaches and nausea, as the captain had unknowingly discovered earlier in the week.

McCoy hypothesized that the captain had been exposed to the pathogen in their mirror universe; that Sickbay had been a veritable little house of horrors, and he wouldn't have been surprised to learn that his Mirror counterpart kept all sorts of nasty surprises around for visitors. All it would have taken would be for Mirror-Chekov's assassination attempt on Kirk to have had a little backup from the medical quarter, and there you have it. The illness took about a week and a half to incubate, and once the initial fever rose high enough the entire collapse of the body's ability to control pain and fight off infection was nearly instantaneous. Frankly, the CMO was surprised Kirk had lasted this long without being out on his feet; the man either had almost Vulcan-like pain repression tactics, or else was just simply too idiotically stubborn to recognize when he was sick.

Or, he suspected, both.

Which was why it nearly drove him mad with grief to hear the choked whimper stifled into the Sickbay pillow by the strong-willed man now lying curled up on the narrow bio-bed.

Across the room, Spock's head jerked upward at the soft sound, and his haunted eyes met the physician's gaze for one heartrending instant before he resumed pacing.

McCoy didn't dare give the captain any more painkillers on top of those he already had; they would interact with the spray of fever-reducer he had administered directly into the bloodstream. He could only stand there, helpless, watching the K-3 indicator climb ceiling-ward and dance mockingly at a level almost intolerable for a human.

_"Scott to Sickbay,"_ the subdued tones of their Chief Engineer interrupted, and the captain gave a faint moan of pain at the fracturing of soothing silence against his mercilessly throbbing head.

Spock punched the intercom button with enough force McCoy stared after him, wondering if he'd imagined it until he saw the dent in the panel. "Report, Mr. Scott."

_"Sir, we canna keep up warp seven-point-eight for much longer, or she'll fall apart at the seams! Already our shields are compromised because of the power drain, and –"_

"Mr. Scott, we have only twenty-four hours to either reach Starbase Six or intercept some vessel carrying what Dr. McCoy requires." The Vulcan's voice stabbed harshly, all chilled steel and granite. "I care not if the entirety of the crew complement must take shifts in Engineering, metaphorically shoveling coal into the furnaces, or if we must confine them all to the shuttle bays and divert all remaining power including life support to the warp engines. You _will_ do what is necessary, Mr. Scott."

The comm was silent for a moment only, and then a quiet _"Aye,"_ filtered through before the channel closed.

It had been thirty-six hours since the captain's collapse; already twelve more than an untreated case would last and only twelve remaining before McCoy's best efforts could no longer halt the progression of the illness. The ship was, literally, shaking with the effort of maintaining such a dangerous speed, and all available Engineering personnel (and, once word had gotten out, a few hundred volunteers from other departments) were hard at work putting out fires (sometimes literally) across the entire vessel.

The Bridge crew sat uneasily under the command of Lieutenant Sulu, on the occasions when the First Officer was not around (which became more frequent as the hours drew closer), and the rest of the crew huddled in the corridors and rec rooms in worried little knots, speaking in low voices and hurrying about their business so as to make as little trouble for the overtaxed command crew as possible.

Everyone knew the captain's life depended upon Engineering and Medical. The usual petty reports about showers malfunctioning and lights needing adjusted in personal quarters suddenly ceased. Girlfriends no longer complained about their engineering young men being forced to pull twelve-hours shifts. Petty squabbling among the security forces disappeared as they pitched in with what basic knowledge they had and able bodies to lessen the load on Scott's prize engineers.

Injuries that could be taken care of by a bit of tender loving care and basic first-aid were cared for in private instead of going to Sickbay. Insomnia and coughs and basic influenzas suddenly were not serious enough to bother Dr. McCoy's staff with. Crewmen were more cautious, more careful, about their duties, for one serious injury could cripple the Sickbay's manpower and take desperately-needed care away from Captain Kirk.

Spock's entire fifteen science departments dropped all studies of star charts and experimental physics, forgot all about daily reports regarding ship's plasma ventilation and anything else they normally busied themselves with, and instead turned solely to the idea of creating a temporary cryo-stasis chamber in which, worst case scenario, they might be able to place the captain until they could reach a Starbase. They had little chance of succeeding and constructing such in time, but it gave them some avenue by which they might be able to help – or at least, to keep their minds off the inevitable.

Uhura's staff worked with Chekov and Spock's other protégés, scanning the deserted sector for any ship, however small, that they might contact to see if they had the vaccine for Vegan choriomeningitis. Spock's scanner whirred throughout all three shifts, nonstop, and Uhura herself busied herself with finding a way to boost subspace signal to get out their distress call to anyone near enough to receive it. All calls not emergency-related were immediately relegated to storage to keep all channels as open as possible, and personal communications were temporarily forbidden for the same reason.

None of the senior command crew had slept in twenty-four hours, until a worn, tightly-in-control First Officer appeared on the Bridge and sternly ordered everyone to at least a four-hour rest period.

When it was drawn to his attention by Chekov that the Commander himself hadn't slept in over double that, the young Russian received such an icy glare that he scuttled hastily after Sulu into the lift, wishing he hadn't been brave enough to say it.

If they were all back on duty in considerably less than four hours, Spock made no mention of it, only coolly turned the conn over to the capable crew and vanished like a wraith in smoke.

The fortieth hour found McCoy staggering blearily out of his office (he'd unwillingly keeled over on his desk in a ten-minute catnap) to discover Uhura standing outside the glass window looking in on the captain's room. Tears stood clearly in her beautiful dark eyes.

"Lieutenant, if you need to be relieved of duty for a little while, no one's goin' to fault you for it," he whispered with unusual gentleness.

The woman shot him an indignant look, though the effect was weakened by the watery sniffle that accompanied it. "No, that's not it, Doctor," she said softly, taking the CMO's arm for a moment and pulling him to where he could see as well. "It's just…well. Look."

He did. And darned if the sight of their stern, impassive Vulcan holding a cup and spoon, carefully and patiently – he'd have said _tenderly_ about anyone else – coaxing their dying captain to sip water one small spoonful at a time didn't make him want to cry too...

-ooo-

Eight hours later, the forty-eight hour mark passed. Kirk writhed in agonizing pain now, unable to keep his cries silent any longer, struggling against the necessary restraints in delirious terror from the climbing fever – for nothing McCoy could do, even old-fashioned ice baths and other archaic remedies that he attempted in rock-bottom desperation, _nothing_ was enough to slow the infection that was killing the captain.

By that point they were screaming through hyperspace at the tail end of what Scotty was now furiously referring to as their _non-existent margin of safety_. Starbase Six had been notified that the _Enterprise_ was arriving unscheduled on a medical emergency, and had a medical team standing by to beam aboard the instant they were within transporter range.

The crew were approaching dead on their feet, many of them from lack of sleep the entire forty-eight hours and many of the senior crew longer than that due to their mission prior to Kirk's collapse; caring for the pirate situation and overseeing the mess that had resulted. Kirk himself had foregone all but a couple of power naps for three days before his collapse, no doubt due to stress and an inability to sleep because of the approaching symptoms; this had weakened his immune system to the point that the choriomeningitis finally reared its ugly head and felled him with only a pathetic battle.

Spock had left Sickbay two hours before they received final affirmation from Starbase Six, for there was nothing he could do to aid the exhausted medical staff; and besides, his duty was to Jim's ship. Despite having no rest or – more importantly – no time for meditation in over a week, he sat on the Bridge, calmly overseeing the final approach and fielding and diverting distressed calls from all over the ship regarding the failing systems due to power overload.

"We've just blown the first dilithium crystal, Commander," Sulu voiced reluctantly, as a loud whine filled the Bridge, followed shortly by a flicker in lights.

"Understood, Lieutenant. Maintain course and speed." Nobody dared say anything to the Vulcan, and judging from the comm silence even Scott didn't want to take his life into his hands that badly by protesting the treatment they were giving the ship.

The power suddenly droned downward, plunging the Bridge into shadow, before the backup systems flared up and returned the lighting to normal.

"Second one," Sulu murmured, both hands on the console in a sharp lookout for any way to shave minutes off their mad rush toward the station.

_"Spock,"_ McCoy's tired voice crackled uneasily through the comm-system, and the lack of formality was excusable under the circumstances._ "If the life-support systems go out down here we're gonna have no options to fall back on if we don't make it there in time!"_

"Estimated time until arrival at Starbase Six, Mr. Chekov?"

"Time…nineteen minutes, forty-five seconds, Mr. Spock." The young man swallowed. "At present speed, of course."

The Vulcan calmly reached for the armrest-communication. "Mr. Scott, can you give the _Enterprise_ twenty more minutes of power on the remaining two crystals, if we shut off all non-essential systems?"

_"I dunno how, but we'll try, sir,"_ came the not-overly-encouraging response. _"But there'll be hell to pay with the 'Fleet over this, ye can be sure – it'll cost a year's wages to repair what's been damaged aboard over this little joyride, and they'll not be willin' to fork over that much latinum without an argument!"_

"Then it is fortunate that my clan is one of the wealthiest of all on the planet Vulcan," Spock replied, one eyebrow rising slowly at the dumbfounded looks he received from the command crew. "Gentlemen, your stations? Mr. Scott…" he added, as they turned back and whispering took the place of staring, "…I believe it is widely accepted in human circles to thank an effort beyond the call of duty. You have my gratitude."

A surprised chuckle filtered through the channel. _"Aye, sir. We'll have ye there in a quarter of an hour, Mr. Spock, and maybe – RILEY! So help me, lad, if ye touch that thing without gloves again I swear I'll boot ye back to Maintenance quicker than ye can sing _  
_'Danny Boy!"_

Spock's eyebrows prodded gently at his bangs, his way of participating in the laughter that bubbled up around him.

"Doctor, we will be at Starbase Six in precisely eighteen minutes," he spoke into the comm.

There was a short pause, and then an audible sigh of relief. _"We'll be in time, then, Mr. Spock. Barely, but we'll make it."_

The entire ship relaxed at the news, and then returned with renewed vigor to their stations.

Sixteen minutes and four seconds later, the _Enterprise_ made an emergency drop out of warp, screeching to a shuddering halt barely within minimum transporter range.

Twenty minutes later, they docked above Starbase Six and Spock ordered all but vitally essential personnel to their quarters for an undetermined rest period.

Fifteen minutes later, he sent even those essential personnel with the exception of Scott and Uhura to their quarters and placed the entirety of the ship on a temporary auto-pilot, as they had no need of any systems other than life-support, medical, and communications at the moment.

Thirteen hours, eighteen minutes, and fifty-three seconds later, Captain Kirk was transferred to a recovery cubicle, still gravely ill but now safely out of danger.

Forty-five minutes later, a haggard Chief Medical Officer showed up on the Bridge to find out why Spock hadn't beaten down the Sickbay door yet.

When Uhura smiled warmly at him, putting a finger to her lips as he staggered out of the lift, he blinked slowly, taking in the scene, and then grinned back at her. A gleeful bounce returned to his weary step for the first time in days.

He'd never dare tell Jim that Spock had fallen asleep in his precious command chair.

He _would_, however, take great pleasure in informing anyone who would listen that sleeping Vulcans don't snore; they purr.

Like a tribble.

And it was ridiculously adorable.

-ooo-

By the time Captain James T. Kirk regained full consciousness five days later, the _Enterprise_ was (mostly) immaculately repaired, their diversion for medical emergency approved with no red tape involved (one very devious Leonard H. McCoy had _connections_, they had all been stunned to discover), and the crew entirely oblivious to any vague rumors the suspicious captain had heard regarding nearly blowing the ship to bits in breaking every rule of warp physics.

And, very definitely, Uhura knew _nothing_ whatsoever about a very annoyed (for a Vulcan) Ambassador Sarek calling in a private transmission to the First Officer, wanting to know why in Surak's name Spock had for the first time in years withdrawn an exorbitant amount of credits from his family account.

She also had absolutely _no_ idea why an irate Admiral Komack's transmissions to the _Enterprise_ while in dock at Starbase Six didn't quite make it through the channels. There was so much subspace traffic in a Starbase that size, after all, that they could hardly be held responsible if messages being sent to their recovering captain never reached their target.

And the rest of the crew were entirely innocent of how the captain's quarters transformed themselves into a balloon-riddled, Starbase-souvenir-and-edible-gift-infested menagerie before he was released from Sickbay.

He would be eating on chocolates and fruit baskets for weeks afterwards.

Which ironically, he thought with glee, would be a good thing for his temper (and thereby his crew) the next time McCoy went off on another one of his dieting campaigns.

James T. Kirk had the most patient, loyal, loving crew in Starfleet, and he knew it.

* * *

(1) Spoilers and speculation about _For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky_. I think it's a bit unrealistic to think that they found the cure for xenopolycythemia right off the bat from those archives, especially for the very good reason that the Fabrini wouldn't have been _calling_ it xenopolycythemia.

(2) The planet in the episode _The Apple_

(3) References the upcoming _Doomsday Machine_ episode.

(4) Oblique reference to _The Mark of Gideon_, where we learn simply that at some point in his life, Vegan choriomeningitis nearly killed Kirk. The disease itself has been widely used and speculated upon, and I could find no reputable source - but many thanks to **endgegner07** for the starting references! - to clearly identify more than general symptoms; therefore the indirect route I felt was the best one. Besides, this story isn't an angst fever-fest but a character study, and so I apologize for the lack of intense gut-wrenching h/c. :) Hope you enjoyed it anyway!


	7. Explanatory Epilogue

**Title**: My Captain (explanatory epilogue)  
**Warnings/Spoilers**: The below explanations are entirely my own words and opinions. List is not conclusive or exclusive, only the five and one reasons I chose to illustrate with the character of James T. Kirk.  
**Summary**: _**Five reasons why the crew of the **_**Enterprise **_**would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same.**_  
**A/N:** Thank you very much to everyone who reviewed this story! I hope you had a fraction as much fun reading it as I did writing it. I intend to tackle Spock next (even have part of the first chapter done), so be on the lookout for that in the next couple of weeks. Congratulations to everyone who guessed the reasons correctly; and even if you didn't word them the same as I did, most people did indeed catch them. Until we meet again, thanks one more time!

* * *

**_Five reasons the crew of the starship Enterprise would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back…_**

**Explanations**:

**Chapter One**  
**Reason**: He takes the time to know each crew member, and finds a common ground upon which to lay the foundations of a relationship.

**Explanation**: James T. Kirk is intelligent, not the shoot-first-think-later brash commander that many fanfictions like to portray him as. He thinks, and quite brilliantly, and every great thinker is first a great reader. _Readers are leaders_ may be a cliché, but it is nonetheless true. A great leader will also use one of his own strengths to find a common ground with a subordinate; meeting there and using a strength to bridge the gap between the two is a principle every leader must master before he can truly become a great leader.

-0-

**Chapter Two**  
**Reason**: He protects his crew – from outside forces, from each other, from themselves, from himself – with his life if need be.  
**Subreason**: He uses these instances to teach valuable lessons, turning the scenarios into learning experiences for his crew regarding how to act and _inter_act.

**Explanation**: He protects his crew from outside forces, as any commander must. He protects them from each other, performing the job of mediator when the need arises. He protects them from themselves, ensuring their safety and health when they are too foolish to see their own needs. And he protects them from himself, for he knows his own inner evil better than most due to a transporter malfunction. More threats lurk in the world than those obvious to the eye; a truly great leader can see both the visible and the invisible dangers that threaten his followers.

-0-

**Chapter Three**  
**Reason**: He is unafraid to risk his command image in order to perform his duty or to bring enjoyment to others.  
**Subreason**: No truly great leader takes himself so seriously that he cannot laugh at himself; those men are not loved by those who follow them.

**Explanation**: Part of what makes James T. Kirk the charismatic commander he is – and part of the reason he drives many fans crazy who think he's no more than a drama queen – is his willingness to risk looking like a fool in order to accomplish his goals. His suave charm and melodramatic flair are two things that set him apart from other Star Trek captains, and that is exactly what makes TOS the magical series it is compared to the other serieses. His gifts and strengths lie in different directions than those of Captain Picard, for example; that does not make him immature, merely a completely different man. As a result, those two _Enterprises_ are vastly different places with vastly different atmospheres. And no matter who among fans dislikes Captain James T. Kirk, one cannot deny the fact that TOS is the utter _magic_ it is, in part because of that man's character.

-0-

**Chapter Four**  
**Reason**: They see how he deals with loss and defeat; whether at the hands of friends, enemies, or when those two seem to be one and the same.  
**Subreason**: A true leader recognizes when a defeat or a loss is acceptable as a stepping-stone to building relationships or to furthering diplomacy.

**Explanation**: Losing is not a shameful thing when it is done to an admirable opponent; and no true leader feels that he must win all the time, must always get the last word, must always be the best at what he does. Such an attitude is both counter-productive and arrogant, as well as unrealistic. When more good will come of a loss than a victory, then that defeat is easier to accept. How he accepts his losses and goes about combating them shows how well he is capable of leading his followers to not repeat those mistakes. However, a truly great leader will recognize that he cannot always face defeat alone, and that he must sometimes accept the help that is offered in order to do so.

-0-

**Chapter Five**  
**Reason**: They see how he faces fear, whether his or someone else's.  
**Subreason**: Fear exists; it may not be explainable or even make sense, but it does exist. No true leader simply ignores the existence of fear; rather, his secret is in that he is capable of overcoming it when duty must be done.

**Explanation**: A true leader never laughs at what his followers fear; maturity recognizes that each person's struggles are equally serious to those people, regardless of how trivial they may seem to others. Fear only becomes shameful when bravery is incapable of moving to the front to hide that fear. There is only one way to vanquish fear; face it head-on, defy it, and accept help from others if one cannot get past it. It is not a shameful thing, merely a fact of life – and learning to properly deal with it both in one's own life and in one's followers' lives is the mark of a true commander.

-0-

**_…and one reason why he would do the same _**

**Chapter Six:**  
**Reason**: They refuse to allow his flaws to cloud their loyalty; rather than resenting his poor decisions, they look past them in love and forgive, banding together to cover for him instead of retaliating.  
**Subreason**: Love covers a multitude of sins, and it is the single most powerful force known in literature. More powerful than death, more powerful than war, more powerful than anger, more powerful than hatred – and the only force known in literary history that is capable of breaking the bonds of each.

**Explanation**: Every relationship is founded chiefly upon love, and by extension – forgiveness. True love, in its purest, non-sexual form, is a self-sacrificing regard for another without thought of reciprocation; a deep-rooted affection that is willing to overlook anything for the sake of love itself. It is the force that binds the universe together, and the driving power of any great relationship in history, literary or otherwise. Love truly does conquer all, in its purest form, and it does cover a multitude of sins. A leader can command respect, but he must _earn_ love; and the best of leaders will do both.


End file.
